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Notes -
"To me, it seems obvious that he bought far out of the money GME calls, then posted on Twitter to pump the stock, then closed those positions for others. The alternative: that he 7x'd his money in 3 years seems unlikely. Naturally, he hasn't posted his trade logs so we can only speculate.
In my opinion, DFV should have stayed out of the spotlight. As a "regular person", not an insider, I think there's a good chance he ends up in jail."
Agreed. The original boom was a nice story- average* Joe (not really that average, he was a CFA and a registered securities broker, but he wasn't rich) finds a massively undervalued stock, puts all his money into it, tells the world, and a bunch of average people make money. Great story.
This though- this just seems like market manipulation. There's no fundamental analysis going on, it's just pure speculation and market manipulation. People tuned into his live stream hoping to get some transparency, but he didn't give that at all, just some crazy rambling and dumb memes. At this point he's doing market manipulation aimed at teenagers and crazy desparate people.
I've been making a lot of money selling far out of the money calls against it whenever the price bubbles. I'll take the easy money but I feel bad for the idiots losing their life savings in this.
It's been said a few times that our rejection of supernatural stories has left young people without the kinds of cautionary tales that used to transmit some amount of wisdom.
Maybe Keith Gill can be the modern world's Icarus.
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Don't you have to own (many) shares of GameStonk to do that? (My understanding of options trading is quite limited.)
You would think so! But no. If you have a margin account and enough capital, you can sell them "naked" without owning the shares. Basically the broker just thinks "eh he's good for it" and will let you do whatever you want. In this case it's been eye opening... the shares are "not available to short" but there was no problem selling options. Options really are the tail that wags the dog, in this kind of market.
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