The broker who is actually holding your stock can lend them out and you can indeed end up buying your own stocks more than once. You can explicitly request the

The broker who is actually holding your stock can lend them out and you can indeed end up buying your own stocks more than once. You can explicitly request the broker to not do it and, in this kind of situation where 125% of the stock is shorted and some *need* to buy it... well :) Have a read from Matt Levine's "Infinite Game" from yesterday: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/will-wallstreetbets-face-sec-scrutiny-after-gamestop-rally https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/will-w... To quote: > Falcone owned some bonds of a company called MAAX Holdings Inc. “After hearing rumors that a Wall Street financial services firm was shorting the MAAX bonds and also encouraging its customers to do the same, Falcone decided to seek revenge.” So he bought all the MAAX bonds. Then he bought more: Short sellers would borrow MAAX bonds (presumably from him), and then sell them to him, so that he ended up with “22 million more bonds than MAAX had ever issued.” Then he stopped lending them out, forcing the short sellers to buy bonds to cover their shorts. But there were no bonds to be bought, since he owned them all (and more). > Falcone stated that the Wall Street firm should just keep bidding for the bonds. Falcone acknowledged that the Wall Street firm would suffer some losses doing so, but told the senior officer and the others that sometimes you are just on the wrong side of a trade.