Massive short squeeze in GME, does short interest still work?

Wallstreetbets Targets Silver Price of $1000.

If enough folks climb in, price will go up.
Coppock Indicator looks good.


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Where did you see that on walstreetbets, link the thread. Aside of ZeroHedge talking about it I haven’t found the source of that.

https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=silver

In game theory a Nash equilibrium sometimes needs a “focal point.”

Like if you had to meet someone in New York with minimal communication where would you go? Hopefully the Empire State Building at noon. Otherwise I would miss you.

So is Silver a “focal point” where traders will meet. Maybe the fact that JP Morgan holds the shorts does not hurt. Maybe there is already a lot of talk about silver for inflation and that will help. Or a history of silver being money in this time of fiat money.

Or the ZeroHedge article. Plus it is so shiny (and happens to have a lot of shorts which Robinhood made known to all by restricting the trades).

And banks everywhere (that may not be short silver or necessarily like Jamie Dimon) can and do buy physical silver every day without having to ask Robinhood. Wanting to speed up some of their purchase before the big squeeze may (or may not) be a focal point.

Just don’t tell me you would go to Grand Central Station at midnight. Or that you will be buying AMC on Monday (even if it is true).

I think i will test my understanding of game theory and focal points.

Jim

Nelson Bunker Hunt, how about we meet on Silver Thursday ? Oh Yeah - will you be at the top of the Empire State Building, or will I be scraping you off the pavement at the bottom?

Steve,

Edit Most important thing first: They will bail you out if you are one of them as we have already seen with GME, Cohen, Citadel. Point72 and Melvin Capitol. Even when there is no question who the manipulators are.

“To save the situation, a consortium of US banks provided a $1.1 billion line of credit to the brothers which allowed them to pay Bache which, in turn, survived the ordeal.”

So I was thinking that we would meet for lunch and I would be long gone by Thursday. Timing is everything.

Before Hunt’s Thursday reckoning silver did this (from your link):

“In 1979, the price for silver (based on the London Fix) jumped from $6.08 per troy ounce ($0.195/g) on January 1, 1979, to a record high of $49.45 per troy ounce ($1.590/g) on January 18, 1980, an increase of 713%.”

I had already thought of the Hunt brothers and one reason I mentioned other banks (probably “other investors” would have been better). I am not sure all investors are short. So:

  1. Silver can be manipulated as you point out. And some say it is very manipulated now (prices kept low).

  2. It may not be just the Reddit crowd interested in this but they are a new force that is active now (see below about other potential players).

  3. Some wealthy people are sympathetic to the Reddit crowd. Like Mark Cuban who has posted on this. And he is not restricted by Robinhood I would guess. Marco probably does not call himself rich in this time of money printing (I certainly do not). But he is in the business, sympathetic and I do not expect he will comment. But no one could fault him for buying a commodity in this time of potential inflation and picking the one that he thought would do the best all things considered—including what is being published on mainstream sites like Bloomberg about short interest being massively high. People run ports on this idea without it being called manipulation.

  4. Some banks have a long interest in silver. For example Wells Fargo & Company as well as Morgan Stanley are among the top 10 holders of PSLV. Maybe they do not like the idea that silver’s prices may be manipulated against them and they might want to buy because it is cheap now—nothing wrong with that especially if they are proven right about silver being cheap.

  5. Exchanges changed the rules then. They have and will now. That needs to be considered. Probably argues for buying some Vanguard ETFs. Probably an exciting bond fund—you know with foreign bonds to make sure your investment barely keeps up with inflation no matter what the dollar does. Actually I have some (leveraged) US bonds in my portfolio so I am not really against this.

  6. The shorts may squeeze themselves to some extent. They do not want to be accused of manipulating the markets either (to the short side) and may get rid of any ridiculous-looking short positions. And could be worried about a squeeze and want to get ahead of it.

But realistically maybe it is 50-50. Just 50% chance that SLV is up 100%. And 50% chance that any squeeze that has already occurred falls apart: perhaps SLV falls 20% then.

Which would you regret more? Being in and losing 20% of your investment or being out of silver and missing out on a doubling. Use your own numbers for likely gains/losses.

Pick you own numbers for what you think could happen and size your positions according to you own “regret minimization strategy” would be my advice. Another game theory consideration I am afraid: This time from Texas No Limit Hold’em.

I was going to buy some precious metals anyway. I think instead of gold, platinum or palladium I will buy more silver than I originally planned and adjust my ratio of holdings going forward according to what unfolds. My position size will probably be about what I was planning anyway. I would regret a 20% loss compared to gold or palladium. But I would regret missing out on any fun more.

The Hunt brothers are an important consideration that I thought of myself. Thank you for posting about them.

Jim

Here is a SA article making a positive case for silver. The author holds Xtierra Inc. closing 0.082 USD on Jan 27.
This can easily double in price to 0.16 USD for a 100% gain. Perhaps Jim should buy this one, why bother with SLV?
You can also buy the 2x leveraged ETF AGO.

Silver Chartbook - A Million Reasons To Buy Silver
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4402156-silver-chartbook-million-reasons-to-buy-silver

I checked on Google Trends, search term silver. There is so far no uptick in search volume.

Go for it Jim! Just keep in mind that Gold and Silver have been manipulated by big players for a long time, and they probably have friends in high places. But it would be nice to see this market manipulation brought to its knees.

While a not a precious metal, lithium has been on tear lately. LAC and PLL call options have been unusually active starting Dec’2020. LIT, too.

Walter

Thank you Walter. I think that is a good idea.

I will look at this closer but I think I will probably add that as one of my commodities/precious metals.

Jim

It’s time to take out sentiment from ranking systems?

There are thoughts that SLV as a target has been “planted” by someone with vested interest in it going up.
Citadel group is apparently a major owner of it and would benefit from a price pump.

What’s the role of buybacks in the GME saga? The total number of shares outstanding has dropped from about 100 mill to about 60 mill over the last 1,5 years. In the same period the number of shares shorted has not really changed much (staying at about 60 mill). It sorta looks like the very high short percentage is caused mostly by GME buybacks, and not really overly aggressive short sellers.

(I’m not 100% sure about the total volume of buybacks since gamestop.com is down at the moment).

If a borrowed stock is sold and the broker doesn’t have the stock in inventory then the broker has an obligation to liquidate the short position. The individual doing the shorting needs to be aware that the short position can disappear at any time.

I might have been wrong about the buybacks, using the “Shares Outstanding” in the Balance sheet panel shows the number of shares being around 65 mill every year back to 2016, but using the sharesCur()- or shares() function in a screen shows a large increase in the number of shares as recently as 2019. I don’t understand why the numbers are different.

P123 - test_user is right. there is a problem with the panel - Annual Balance Sheet. It appears to be displaying quarters not annual, at least for the common shares.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. You’re right: the panel Balance Sheet was using quarterly instead of annual share counts. It has now been fixed.

They were crushed by Wall St. The WSB people.