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I think there's also evidence that the "short bubble" might be more widespread than we think. I'm not entirely convinced that Melvin was able to unwind their 5

I think there's also evidence that the "short bubble" might be more widespread than we think. I'm not entirely convinced that Melvin was able to unwind their 50mln short position and drive the short interest down on Ortex (they're the best thing we've got in terms of guessing how much true short interest there is, because exchanges only report once or twice a month on a week or more delay) by covering. Equally likely in my mind is that Citadel bought Melvin's book thinking that it had a better plan than unwinding the short just yet. Instead, "hide" the short someplace that Ortex isn't looking and that the exchanges won't report on for another 3 weeks. That would be their order flow with a company they are in a unique position with - Robinhood - where lots of the buy orders are coming from. If you were Citadel and a little unscrupulous, you could immediately route every sell order on RH to the market but keep the buy orders for yourself. This positions you as short to Robinhood users, and you get to send those sold shares back to the book you bought from Melvin to unwind that short. So, the short does still exist, but now it's not visible to outside brokers. Outside brokers, when Ortex calls them up, will say, no no, Melvin covered a bunch today and short interest actually went down! So Ortex publishes a lower SI number. But, that short didn't actually just disappear. Either Citadel, or Robinhood, now are short to their customers. Are there other companies that have "hidden" short interest in this way? Are some of the big unexplained market moves in companies without short interest some of these "hidden" shorts unwinding before everyone finds out?

scythe 6y ago
>Equally likely in my mind is that Citadel bought Melvin's book thinking that it had a better plan than unwinding the short just yet. Instead, "hide" the short someplace that Ortex isn't looking and that the exchanges won't report on for another 3 weeks. That would be their order flow with a company they are in a unique position with - Robinhood - where lots of the buy orders are coming from. If you were Citadel and a little unscrupulous, you could immediately route every sell order on RH to the market but keep the buy orders for yourself. This positions you as short to Robinhood users, and you get to send those sold shares back to the book you bought from Melvin to unwind that short. So, the short does still exist, but now it's not visible to outside brokers. Outside brokers, when Ortex calls them up, will say, no no, Melvin covered a bunch today and short interest actually went down! Is that legal? Manipulating report agencies to manipulate the value of a stock? There are multiple Congressmembers interested in this situation. That could be a very dangerous game.
- jaycroft 6y ago
  Probably a little bit illegal (like, hundreds of dollars of fines per millions of dollars of infringement) and this is pure speculation. But as I understand it, the Market Makers like Citadel are only required to be market neutral in terms of their statistical exposure at the end of the day, and don't need to report their long/short position. On the other hand, brokers aren't required to be delta neutral, but do report their long/short position. You can probably hide a lot of these shorts in this baby. I guess this also doesn't count short interest that's in bespoke one-off derivatives that hedge funds and investment banks trade between themselves. Also, nobody has to tell Ortex what their short interest is. The only true numbers we can sort of trust are the twice monthly delayed reports. Ortex is just a third party service provider that goes around calling brokerages and doing some stats on the market to see how they think the short interest has changed. So, I can see it being pretty low risk even if you do get caught. I think (with very low probability, but it is an explanation) this could also be why we're seeing random 100% spikes in unrelated stocks that claim to have approximately 0% short interest. Some hedge fund somewhere is in some sort of hidden short, getting margin called, or nervous, or just de-risking and getting out of an off the books short trade, causing a mini short squeeze. There are a couple companies with suspicious pops this week, and I'd be on the lookout for more of this activity on Monday. Could just be people getting out of high volatility positions though, or freeing up capital for other things. But that would be selling pressure, not buying. So, -\?/-
jaycroft 6y ago
And now that we have a much more full picture of exactly what has been going on with the numbers of Failures to Deliver (since December), and better understanding of hedging strategies and income generating strategies (selling covered calls, buying protective calls with cash reserved for exercise), it appears that there isn't really any fraud here, no evidence of widespread naked shorting, no evidence of rolling of naked shorts in danger of hitting failure to deliver limits (which the SEC actually does actively pursue enforcement of and considers to be sham transactions). My key takeaways here are that there was probably a little fraud (maybe someone found a bug in some broker that let them do some sort of infinite shares glitch), maybe a little rolling of shorts (but not by anyone big), and probably a lot of writing of covered calls by the likes of Fidelity and Blackrock as a way to get income generation while at the same time acting as a limit sell order (albeit one that you can't take down). Coupled with some early botched PR and celebrity pumping etc, and even my own speculation, this feels almost Q-like in it's explosive growth and conspiracy-theory oriented thinking. After everything I've seen this week I think I actually have the highest faith I've had in a long time in our financial system.

scythe 6y ago

>Equally likely in my mind is that Citadel bought Melvin's book thinking that it had a better plan than unwinding the short just yet. Instead, "hide" the short someplace that Ortex isn't looking and that the exchanges won't report on for another 3 weeks. That would be their order flow with a company they are in a unique position with - Robinhood - where lots of the buy orders are coming from. If you were Citadel and a little unscrupulous, you could immediately route every sell order on RH to the market but keep the buy orders for yourself. This positions you as short to Robinhood users, and you get to send those sold shares back to the book you bought from Melvin to unwind that short. So, the short does still exist, but now it's not visible to outside brokers. Outside brokers, when Ortex calls them up, will say, no no, Melvin covered a bunch today and short interest actually went down! Is that legal? Manipulating report agencies to manipulate the value of a stock? There are multiple Congressmembers interested in this situation. That could be a very dangerous game.

jaycroft 6y ago
Probably a little bit illegal (like, hundreds of dollars of fines per millions of dollars of infringement) and this is pure speculation. But as I understand it, the Market Makers like Citadel are only required to be market neutral in terms of their statistical exposure at the end of the day, and don't need to report their long/short position. On the other hand, brokers aren't required to be delta neutral, but do report their long/short position. You can probably hide a lot of these shorts in this baby. I guess this also doesn't count short interest that's in bespoke one-off derivatives that hedge funds and investment banks trade between themselves. Also, nobody has to tell Ortex what their short interest is. The only true numbers we can sort of trust are the twice monthly delayed reports. Ortex is just a third party service provider that goes around calling brokerages and doing some stats on the market to see how they think the short interest has changed. So, I can see it being pretty low risk even if you do get caught. I think (with very low probability, but it is an explanation) this could also be why we're seeing random 100% spikes in unrelated stocks that claim to have approximately 0% short interest. Some hedge fund somewhere is in some sort of hidden short, getting margin called, or nervous, or just de-risking and getting out of an off the books short trade, causing a mini short squeeze. There are a couple companies with suspicious pops this week, and I'd be on the lookout for more of this activity on Monday. Could just be people getting out of high volatility positions though, or freeing up capital for other things. But that would be selling pressure, not buying. So, -\?/-

jaycroft 6y ago

And now that we have a much more full picture of exactly what has been going on with the numbers of Failures to Deliver (since December), and better understanding of hedging strategies and income generating strategies (selling covered calls, buying protective calls with cash reserved for exercise), it appears that there isn't really any fraud here, no evidence of widespread naked shorting, no evidence of rolling of naked shorts in danger of hitting failure to deliver limits (which the SEC actually does actively pursue enforcement of and considers to be sham transactions). My key takeaways here are that there was probably a little fraud (maybe someone found a bug in some broker that let them do some sort of infinite shares glitch), maybe a little rolling of shorts (but not by anyone big), and probably a lot of writing of covered calls by the likes of Fidelity and Blackrock as a way to get income generation while at the same time acting as a limit sell order (albeit one that you can't take down). Coupled with some early botched PR and celebrity pumping etc, and even my own speculation, this feels almost Q-like in it's explosive growth and conspiracy-theory oriented thinking. After everything I've seen this week I think I actually have the highest faith I've had in a long time in our financial system.