GME scandal: Some explanations & why trading got halted.Citadel & Point72 bailed out Melvin Capital which was the GME short selling bagholder, but it does not end here.
There are other short sellers. And these stocks, not just GME, but others too, became extremely volatile and on giant volume.
So first there is the issue of liquidated funds that do not have immediate cash.
They hold positions and would have to unwind them to get cash to cover their margin calls.
Melvin Capital I read was down 30% and got bailed out, so they still have assets, just not liquid, no immediately available cash.
Trust me, if they had a gun to their head they'd have immediately available cash, they'd manage.
Second, even after what happened in 2007-2009, financial institutions with systemic risk are not THAT capitalized.
It's not new and never gets solved: in 1987 NYSE specialists had to bed big banks to provide them with more cash or the whole world would collapse.
And I think bureaucrats do not understand how this all works very well. No one does honestly. But bureaucrats are really clueless and under or overreact. Always.
It gets scary for the clearing firms when you have GME making $35 billion volume and going up 400% in 2 days, AMC making $20 billion and gap 300%, higher volumes than Apple and Amazon that are already higher than usual and on 100 times the volatility.
Interactive Broker CEO was the most honest in my eyes and in an interview with CNBC said they halted trading to protect their clients, the clearing houses, the market, and themselves. He said if they had not done it the short squeeze would have kept "going and going", so regulators & brokers agreed to stop it all to "stop the losses".
Robinhood decided to re-open trading and the CEO pretended he halted trading of the very volatile stocks as routine like "oh didn't notice anything special was going on" 🤡.
Webull CEO said in an interview their clearing house told them they could not take trades anymore. I think they use another entity than Robinhood does.
Not sure why Robinhood halted buying (and not selling). There's really the need for an investigation here. I can't tell you what happened because we do not know.
My 2 cents:
Short sellers are still very strong on this stock, I think they might even have added, I don't know if they are friends with the clearing house but either way they (ch) get stuck in this game, and retail investors are understandably angry at getting blocked like this.
Brokers don't have billions to my knowledge with which they can cover counterparty risk and they have no contractual obligation to do so and I mean they're not santa claus.
My personal opinion is short sellers refusing to liquidate and take the L is the source of all risks and problems (most of it might be options that they can just hold? Not sure how this gets counted in short interest).
Maybe already the counterparty clearing firms got wiped clean, but regardless of this if the price skyrockets further and the bagholding shorts that refuse to close while they can end up being liquidated and margin called, it's truly over for the market. Everyone is going bankrupt, WSB crashed the world.
The counterparty providers risk is real, but I am not their accountant, I do not know how bad things are, and we don't know what actors (if any) are of good faith. It could be (it probably is) shorties refusing to take the L, putting the whole market at risk.
I think they are really worried the price gets to 5000. From the Peterffy (IBKR) interview they really expected this. And it might still happen.
Lehman Brothers, James Cordier, Melvin, same story. They get greedy, they refuse to get out, they get rekt.
And sometimes they get an unfair bailout, and are so deluded they actually think they got unlucky when they really messed up.
