so theres several different ways to buy calls and put. Theres calls and covered calls. Some brokers will only let you sell the later due to the margin needed.

so theres several different ways to buy calls and put. Theres calls and covered calls. Some brokers will only let you sell the later due to the margin needed. With a covered call you have to own the stock and hold it in your portfolio. With a non covered call, if your option gets exercised you then buy the stock at market value and sell to the executor at the agreed upon price. basically when people are saying they shorted over 100% of the stock they are saying that its a non covered PUT contract and there isn't enough stock to cover the volume of all the PUT options contracts. BUT what we don't know is when this PUT options contracts expire, which could basically make all of this worth fairly worthless. If the shorts option contracts don't expire til next year then this really doesn't matter to them. Generally the P&L dept will make them stagger the options contracts over dates spanning the next year or so though. I would recommend reading up on call and put options for more information.