GME MOASS THESIS SUMMARY - 2.0 | Summarization of the Mother of All Short Squeezes Thesis and the Market Concepts/Mechanics behind it. Buckle Up 🚀💎🙌

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This is refined and reformatted version of my previous MOASS Thesis Summary that can be found in the DD Beginners Guide Page, and includes some new formatting and concepts. This one will replace it if it is well-received (either the post of the contents, either way, the link will take you to the right info).

This content is still a slight work in progress and is not perfect (working to expand a couple newer sections), so feel free to offer suggestions.

I. IMPORTANT LINKS FOR NEW MEMBERS TO r/superstonk

II. INTRO / INTENTION OF POST

The core intention of this post was to frame the MOASS Thesis in a way that was understandable to individuals inside and outside of the community (especially those who are relatively new to the market). It also is intended to serve as a reference to leverage if you are ever trying to explain to someone why you think it is a good investment option.

This post will give a relatively simplistic breakdown of the current situation and landscape of GameStop Stock (GME). It will summarize the theory that GME’s price will soon reach astronomical levels during a massive short squeeze, AKA “The Mother of all Short Squeezes (MOASS) Thesis”. The bulk of this post is a breakdown of the market terms and concepts that will need to be understood in order to fully comprehend the who-what-when-where-why-how.

III. Personal note

Feel free to use the contents of this post however you want. Don’t worry about asking for permission to copy it, cross-post it, translate it, refine and use it in your own posts, etc.

Leave a comment if you have any questions. If you prefer Chat or do not meet karma requirements, you can hit me up on chat as well

Note that, while I may have a good grasp on the concepts broken down in this post, my background is not in finance, investing, or trading, so there may be some questions I do not have the answer do (especially if they are not called out in this post)

I have found myself more active on Twitter than I ever really expected to be, so feel free to follow me if you want things like the below:

Disclaimer

This writeup is NOT intended to serve as a source of proof/evidence behind this theory, and it operates under the assumption that the theory is valid and that the conditions it is built on are valid. Credit for the DD this Thesis is based on belongs to the broader retail community inside and outside of r/superstonk. I personally contributed very little beyond synthesizing and summarizing the thesis and mechanics in a digestible way to help enable others to get the word out, and I am not an expert on really any of these topics despite having some knowledge in them.

IV. TL;DR (Also at Bottom)

  1. Toxic Market Participants have built up massive short positions made through Naked Shorting

  2. Retail caught on to this strategy and discovered it can backfire if the company being shorted does not go bankrupt, especially if shares are bought and held indefinitely

  3. Rules and regulations have implemented by the DTCC and its subsidiaries have been geared towards preventing market collapse, as well as to minimize the ability to perform illegal trades (naked shorting)

  4. The SEC is also doing more to enforce compliance with the “rules”

  5. The manipulators are at the mercy of a vicious trade cycle (t+21 FTD Cycle) that is forcing those with naked short positions to perform actions to cover (buy back shares that are short), or risk regulatory consequences

  6. This act of rapid covering drives up the price, making it more expensive to cover during the next cycle if the share price continues to increase week over week

  7. Eventually, the prices of GME will get so high that prime brokers/clearing houses will have no choice but to Margin Call these participants which most likely will not be affordable due to the nature of Short Squeezes, causing them to default

  8. The Prime-Brokers will then take on the position, and if the Prime Brokers cannot cover them and also defaults, the NSCC will be next to attempt to settle all positions left over based on their Recovery and Wind-down Plan (p42)

  9. If NSCC cannot afford to close everything with the money reserved for this type of situation, they the Fed must navigate the remaining positions (potentially via printing money/bailout)

V. KEY CONCEPTS

These terms are key to understanding the theory and speculated value of a GME investment. Hyperlinks to Investopedia, “the world’s leading source of financial content on the web”, have been included for most market terms and concepts and it is recommended to check them out if they are not clear. We will be breaking down some of the more complex terms and concepts within the post and framing them within the context of GME.

Table of Contents for Key Concepts

  1. Stocks Concepts

    1. Share/Stock

    2. Synthetic Shares

    3. Outstanding Shares

    4. Restricted Shares

    5. The Float

    6. Annual General Meeting

    7. Shareholder Votes

  2. Trade Positions

    1. Long Position - Buying/Selling Stock

    2. Short Position - Shorting/Covering Stock

    3. Naked Short Position - Naked Shorting/Covering Stock

  3. Market Participants

    1. Retail Investors

    2. Institutional Investors

    3. Market Makers

    4. Prime Brokers

    5. Clearinghouses

    6. MSM

  4. IMPORTANT MARKET/TRADE MECHANICS (MOASS)

    1. Fails to Deliver (FTD)

    2. Margin

    3. Margin Calls

    4. Margin Calls Who Calls Who

    5. Short Squeeze

1 - STOCKS CONCEPTS

1.1 - Shares/Stock

Shares are the smallest unit of a Companies Stock

1. 2 - Synthetic Shares

Synthetic Shares are the financial instruments that get produced through Naked Shorting

1.3 - Outstanding Shares

The number of Outstanding shares encompasses the amount of issued shares held by all shareholders (both private and public)

1.4 - Restricted Shares

Restricted shares include the number of issued shares held by insiders of the company

1.5 - The Float

The Float, or Floating Stock is the number of shares of stock that are available to be publicly traded (the number of Outstanding shares minus the amount of Restricted shares that are owned by insiders).

1.6 - Shareholder Votes

Annual General Meetings basically is an annual meeting that allows shareholders to vote

1.7 - Shareholder Votes

Shareholder Voting is a right extended to shareholders holding shares in the stock that entitle the owner to vote on cooperate policies

2 - TRADE POSITIONS

2.1 - Long Position - Buying/Selling Stock

When an investor buys a stock they are considered long on it (this is the type of position most people associate with trading stocks)

Basic flow of obtaining/closing a long position is:

  1. Buy the stock

  2. Hold it until the price of it increases to a desired amount

  3. Sell it for a profit

2.2 - Short Position - Shorting/Covering Stock

When a short seller shorts a stock they hold a short position on the stock, or owe the party they borrowed from however many shares they shorted

Basic flow of obtaining/closing a short position:

  1. Borrow a share owned by a lender

  2. Sell the stock that was borrowed

  3. Gaining the cash based on the price it was at the time it was “shorted”

  4. Pay interest as a percentage of the stock’s value

  5. Since this is a percentage the cost of interest increases if the stock’s value increases

  6. Hold the position until the price has dropped to a desired price

  7. Buy the stock on the open market

  8. Ideally the stock is bought back at a lower price than originally borrowed for so the investor can pocket the difference

  9. Return the share back to the lender

2.3 - Naked Short Position - Naked Shorting/Covering Stock

Naked Shorting effectively allows a Short Seller, working with a market maker, to short a stock using a without having a borrowed share like normal short selling

Basic flow of obtaining/closing a naked short position (kind of complex and involves two specific parties for 2 initial trades called a married put)

  1. A Short Seller “A” buys 100 shares from a Market Maker “Z” who can technically sell them without locating them

    1. Market Maker is Naked Shorting the stock, and the Short Seller is receiving 100 synthetic shares
  2. Short Seller “A” now buys a Put Option (1 options contract is worth 100 shares) from Market Maker “Z” who is the writer of the put

    1. Writing/selling a put nets +100 shares to the Market Maker, which results in the -100 shares that were naked shorted to be neutralized, so the Market Maker no is at a neutral position (Market Makers generally try to remain net 0 on trades

    2. Short Seller “A” now has 100 shares that can be short sold (they “borrowing” the synthetic shares the Market Maker effectively printed out of thin air), and one put contract that they can make money on as long as the price goes down

  3. The steps or the short seller are basically the same as a normal short sale now (2.2 steps 2-8), however, interest from the Short seller does not need to be paid to a lender (no one is formally lending it)

    1. The premium from the put being purchased from the Market Maker is how they benefit

    2. Short Seller “A” now has a short position that they can cover simply by buying 100 shares, which would cancel out the synthetic short position

3 - MARKET PARTICIPANTS

3.1 - Retail Investors

3.2 - Institutional Investors

Institutional Investors are organizations that invest on individuals’ behalf

3.3 - Market Makers

3.4 - Prime Brokers

3.5 - Clearinghouses

Clearinghouses are intermediaries between buyers and sellers

3.6* - MSM (Mainstream Media)

Though not a traditional market participant (as in they are not trade/financial entities) the MSM is worth noting due to its role in influencing the financial atmosphere and landscape

4 - IMPORTANT MARKET/TRADE MECHANICS (MOASS)

4.1 - Failures to Deliver (FTD)

4.2 - Margin

  1. Imagine I have $1,000 in stock

  2. You obtain a personal loan for another $1000

  3. To get the credit you stake your $1000 in stock (if you default it goes to the lender to cover your debt)

  4. You buy $1000 more stock with that loan (you now own $2000 in stocks, half in cash half on margin)

  5. You will pay interest on the $1000 on margin but if your investment makes more money than the interest then you are still profiting

  6. If your investment turns bad (lets say the price of your stock falls 50% and you are left with $1000) your lender can forcibly close out your positions (everything you bought in cash and staked as collateral along with what you bought on margin so that they can get the $1000 they loaned you back)

4.3 - Margin Call

Margin Examples:

This is a slightly complicated scenario that can be a little hard to follow. Give it a few reads if it doesn’t make sense the first time, but basically, Margin is a credit line that you can use to buy more assets (effectively a loan backed by collateral and cash in your own account). If you buy assets with it, you have to pay back what you borrowed, whether the value of your investment goes up or down (if the investment goes up in value, you make more than you normally would, but if the investment goes down in value, you lose more than you otherwise would have without margin).

This gets even more (or less maybe) complicated when you have short positions AND long positions, like most institutional investors. To have short positions, I still need to have margin, but I do not need to use it to buy stocks, It can act as a buffer if I have a short position on a stock that is increasing in value (with a short position, if the price of something I short goes up, I am losing money), and if it gets too high, it can run against my margin line, causing a margin call.

GAIN: Long Positions

  1. Imagine I have $1000 in stock XXX (let’s say 10 shares worth $100 each)

  2. My broker may lend me margin credit line equal to the value of my assets (so $1000 in margin), and let’s say they give me a margin requirement of $800, meaning that the value of my non-margin assets (the ones I bought with my money) must be above $800 in order to keep using margin (so as long as stock XXX stays above $80 a share, then I will not get a margin call for being below the requirement)

  3. I then choose to use the margin, buying 10 more shares of stock XXX for $100 each, so I now have 20 shares of stock XXX, valued at 100$ a piece

  4. If the price of stock XXX goes up to %25 per share, and I sell all 20 shares, I just profited $500 (+$25 on 20 shares)

    1. In this case, closing the position clears me from the margin debt, as I am no longer using it in an open position

    2. If I had not used margin, I would have only walked away with $250 in profit ($25 per share on 10 shares), but instead I made $500, and paid back the credit, plus a little bit of interest.

  5. Yay.

LOSS: Long Positions

  1. Imagine I have $1000 in stock XXX (let’s say 10 shares worth $100 each)

  2. My broker may lend me margin credit line equal to the value of my assets (so $1000 in margin), and let’s say they give me a margin requirement of $800, meaning that the value of my non-margin assets (the ones I bought with my money) must be above $800 in order to keep using margin (so as long as stock XXX stays above $80 a share, then I will not get a margin call for being below the requirement)

  3. I then choose to use the margin, buying 10 more shares of stock XXX for $100 each, so I now have 20 shares of stock XXX, valued at 100$ a piece

  4. If the price of stock XXX goes down %25, bringing the value per share down to $75 a share, the value of my total position is now $1500, and the value of my non-margin assets is $750, which is below the margin requirement (keep in mind, I borrowed $1000, so that is still the amount I have to pay back)

  5. My lender will give me a margin call, indicating I have two business days to deposit 50$ into my account in order to meet the margin requirement

    1. If I have the cash to deposit the extra $50 would take my assets to $800 ($750 in stock XXX + 50$ cash)

      1. If the price of stock XXX recovered to above $80 per share, it could also satisfy the requirement
    2. If I do not have the cash to deposit, then I am in trouble, as after two days, they are allowed to liquidate (sell) the assets I bought with my own money, as well as the assets I bought on margin

      1. Let’s say this happens, all my borrowed assets are sold first to cover my $1000 loan (since the price of stock XXX was only $750, it only covers $750 of my $1000 margin line

      2. I now have $750 left in assets of Stock X, but I still owe money from margin, so my lender is entitled to sell $250 work of my shares in order to get their full $1000 back

      3. I am now left with $500 total ($750 in 10 shares of stock XXX - $250)

  6. Not Yay

LOSS: Short and Long Positions

THIS IS THE RELEVANT ONE TO GME/AMC

  1. Imagine I have $1000 in stock XXX (let’s say 10 shares worth $100 each)

  2. My broker may lend me margin credit line equal to the value of my assets (so $1000 in margin), and let’s say they give me a margin requirement of $800, meaning that the value of my non-margin assets (the ones I bought with my money) must be above $800 in order to keep using margin

  3. Instead of using the margin to buy more, I instead short 10 shares of stock YYY which is at $50 a share currently (giving me $500 in extra cash), which I use to buy 5 more shares of stock X

    1. I am now long 15 shares of stock XXX valued at $1500 and short 10 shares of stock YYY valued at -$500 (negative $500) for a net value of $1000

    2. No margin is actively committed to open positions, and I am still using my $1000

  4. Now, lets say a short squeeze happens involving stock Y, causing the price to skyrocket to $200 per share

    1. My short position is now -$2000 (10 shares of -$200 each)
  5. My net account value is now $-500 ($1500 - $2000) which is now using my margin, and because my account’s value is no longer above $800, I no longer meet margin requirements so I get a margin call

  6. If I cannot balance my account, the lender will liquidate my $1500 in stock XXX in order to pay the -$2000 I owe, leaving me with -$500 left in debt

    1. I have now defaulted, as I cannot pay the $500
  7. Now that I have defaulted, the lender who gave me margin owns my short positions, meaning they are now short whatever was left

    1. The lender can now navigate the short positions however they want (they can hold them and hope the price goes down, and cover to close them, or they can close them immediately, costing them the whole $500 I still owed)
  8. GUH! (Translation if you are not WSB: Ah @#$%)

4.4 - Margin Calls Who Calls Who

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 4
Retail Trader Broker Prime Broker NSCC (DTCC) Fed (JPOW)
x Market Maker Prime Broker NSCC (DTCC) Fed (JPOW)
x Hedge Fund Prime Broker NSCC (DTCC) Fed (JPOW)

4.5 - Short Squeeze

VI. The Mother of All Short Squeezes (MOASS)

Explanation

Now that we have gone through the many important terms, we can get to the theory behind MOASS.

Due excessive short-selling and naked shorting of GME by certain market participants (primarily large hedge funds and market makers), retail investors and long institutional investors collectively own a number of shares that exceeds the the float. The amount of shares that are currently owned is theorized to range roughly between 200%-400% of the float if not more, meaning that 100%-300% of the float has a corresponding short position (mostly naked shorts). For context, most stocks generally have around 1% Short Interest, and 10%-20% short interest is considered to be excessive, let alone over 100% of it.

Short sellers must eventually close, or cover, their short position

So what happens if no one is selling the shares they are “long” on, but short sellers need to buy them?

If you are wondering why an organization would abusively short a stock like this if they eventually have to cover their positions:

Short positions amount to the total number of long positions minus the float, meaning (based on the theorized range) that somewhere between ~56-170 Million shares will need to be bought in order to close all short positions

Consideration

This is a totally unprecedented situation, so, in truth, there is a lot of uncertainty around what wind-down will look like once this gets to the Prime Brokers (major banks) and NSCC, as well as around how high the price peak will reach. There is a real risk of broad negative impact across the entire market because of this and the current Repo Rates and margin debt.

A few things I think are safe to assume are:

VII. Final thoughts…

This is the GME MOASS thesis. GME is a stock that stands to hit an unprecedented price point due to the fact that manipulators of the market have failed to bankrupt GameStop thanks in huge part to the Legendary Keith Gill AKA u/DeepFuckingValue, Ryan Cohen, Michael Burry, and all of the GME investors who took part in this saga. It may not be today, this week, or even this month, but one day soon, these toxic participants have no choice but to buy the stock to close out their short positions.

In some schools of thought, it is thought that these participants over-estimated how “reasonable” retail investors can be (who could be dumb enough to hold a stock as it fell from almost $500 to $40?). In truth, these manipulators didn’t understand the demographic they were fighting with. Gamers are some of the most stubborn people on the planet. These are individuals who will sink tens of thousands of hours into the same video game because “they just like it”. Well, “we like the stock”, and to us, the adversaries on Wall Street just are just another “boss”. We may have needed to retry a couple times, but we always win eventually. On top of that, they pissed off reddit, and under no circumstances, should you ever piss off reddit.

At this point, if you are still reading this, know that it is up to you to decide your next move, whether that is to do some due diligence of your own, walk away, or say screw it and buy a few (or a lot of) shares just in case we are right. Many of us have set our floor (minimum amount of acceptable gains) at $20,000,000 per share, and you might think that is crazy, but in truth, we know we can pick our own price if we hold long enough. We don’t care if anyone else buys or not, because we know the outcome is inevitable. Time is running out for the toxic market participants involved, and even the news can’t hide that we are on the brink of a massive market event that will ripple through the entire global financial system, and we will probably never see an event like this again in our lifetime.

This is a fight Wall Street, Shitadel, Melvin Capital, and ever other toxic party is not going to win against the “dumb money”. Chances are this will truly be “THE MOASS”, meaning there will never be another like it in our lifetime (or ever). While the conditions in play (the ability for big money to brutally manipulate the market) enabled what may end up being the greatest transfer of wealth in history, actual reformation to prevent a landscape like this from forming again is probably best long term (I say this as a pragmatist, and am honestly very far from an idealist). If you want to influence reform, Buy, Hold, Vote. If you are just here for the tendies, Buy, Hold, Vote.

VIII. TL;DR

  1. Toxic Market Participants have built up massive short positions made through Naked Shorting

  2. Retail caught on to this strategy and discovered it can backfire if the company being shorted does not go bankrupt, especially if shares are bought and held indefinitely

  3. Rules and regulations have implemented by the DTCC and its subsidiaries have been geared towards preventing market collapse, as well as to minimize the ability to perform illegal trades (naked shorting)

  4. The SEC is also doing more to enforce compliance with the “rules”

  5. The manipulators are at the mercy of a vicious trade cycle (t+21 FTD Cycle) that is forcing those with naked short positions to perform actions to cover (buy back shares that are short), or risk regulatory consequences

  6. This act of rapid covering drives up the price, making it more expensive to cover during the next cycle if the share price continues to increase week over week

  7. Eventually, the prices of GME will get so high that prime brokers/clearing houses will have no choice but to Margin Call these participants which most likely will not be affordable due to the nature of Short Squeezes, causing them to default

  8. The Prime-Brokers will then take on the position, and if the Prime Brokers cannot cover them and also defaults, the NSCC will be next to attempt to settle all positions left over based on their Recovery and Wind-down Plan (p42)

  9. If NSCC cannot afford to close everything with the money reserved for this type of situation, they the Fed must navigate the remaining positions (potentially via printing money/bailout)

IX. STILL TL;DR

Margin Calls happen across the market and force all market participants with short positions in GME to cover or go bankrupt if they cannot afford to. The NSCC’s systems that will settle positions after mass defaults liquidates all short hedge funds and covers as much GME as it can. If the NSCC cannot pay everything, it fails up to the Fed and JPOW to print money to settle the trades.

X. Hedgies, velkommen til helvete. Vi kommer for tĂĄrene dine.

START EDITS LOG edit: 6/10/21 12:28PM ET Added google drive link but switched with one drive so it wouldn’t display who is looking at the file (unless they are in incognito)

edit: 6/10/21 1:08PM ET Updated link to a onedrive anonymously shared link (shouldn’t show who is viewing it, but you might consider accessing the link via an incognito window). https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AF%2D4Ar3%2DZkRC6ZE&cid=A204BFD088578646&id=A204BFD088578646%21106&parId=A204BFD088578646%21103&o=OneUp

edit: 6/10/21 1:51PM ET Minor typo (extra bullet). Removed from 3.4 (prime brokers).

edit: 6/10/21 2:10PM ET IMPORTANT NOTE - Feel free to share and distribute as appropriate if you feel there is value in doing so (and obviously only if you are comfortable doing so). Like I said, I don’t care about credit, but I do care about getting exposure of GME, naked shorting, and the manipulation in the market. We have been getting hit with shills and FUD inside and outside the community courtesy of the SHF’s tactics. Getting the good information we have out (passively, I am not saying to push it on people or to be intrusive) is one of the few tactics we have against the SHFs outside of 💎🙌. They weaponized social media and MSM; so can we (but with DD, not shilling and perpetuating FUD).

END EDITS LOG