BIG UPDATE / POTENTIAL CONSPIRACY THEORY
I'm uneasy about a potential liquidity crisis in the making. Let me play you a scenario. ~20B losses suffered by GME shorts so far. Short float is still ~140%. Brokerages probably put buy restrictions on high short names this morning for one reason: The day before EVERY naked short call or naked short on these high short names were so ITM that even liquidation of entire portfolios couldn't cover losses. This is probably because brokerage margin requirements were MUCH lower than what they expected they needed to be and were not quick enough to increase those. So what happens next? Brokerage firms had to exercise ITM naked calls, liquidate near-entire portfolios to cover short losses, and deposit to the clearing house for those exercised calls. HOWEVER, if the investor doesn't have any money to cover these exercises, the brokerages have to pay the clearing houses out of their pocket because the investor doesn't have it. SO, there had to be a coordinated shutdown of buying these names to ensure these companies didn't blow up another 200% or else brokerage firms could have gone bankrupt just from the exponentially compounding losses.
This is the same concept as Feb 2018 when people who were short VIX blew up because of the magnitude of the % gain as well as the length exceeding a few days.
I think the same scenario can play out this time around if retailers can continue to push short names to higher magnitudes, and risk elevates even greater over longer time horizons. If the cumulative losses from shorts on high short names exceed 100B or more, EVERY brokerage firm may be at risk of liquidation. To make things worse, hedge funds right now are probably holding volatility lower to pickup VIX hedges for cheap, because they know if this continues, they will have to liquidate the rest of their portfolio's gainers to close short positions. That will drag down the rest of the market and will SPIKE the VIX. In which case, they will profit wildly off the impending market crash with their VIX hedges all the while destroy the average retail investor bag holder. Who wins at the end? The HFs or YOU if long volatility. This is a binary event that will play out next week. The risk of the calls are nothing compared to what can unfold.