I mean do people really believe Robinhood traders are moving billions of dollars of stock a day? Most admit that they aren’t selling and buying at higher and higher levels. That translates to very little cash to buy more. There is absolutely no way that these moves can be attributed to retail traders or short squeezes. The narrative that these are retailers causing every significant move higher and with every move the shorts are losing more and more is actually causing this bubble.

Let's say the average bet is 1-5k into this the average Robinhood user invests around 5k), it only takes 200k-1M buying in to move $1B into the stock. When you start with a $200M market cap on a heavily shorted stock, you easily end up where we are today

Average bet being 1-5k feels optimistic by an order of magnitude...

The entire account value of normal RH users in the range of 1-5k

Most people just joining don't have 1k to just throw at a lottery ticket, and remember that until today RH allowed fractional shares of GME

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But you know, that's not even it...

The other day GME did 20 Billion in volume in a single trading day. More than the S&P 500.

I don't understand how people think retail can account for that.

And doing it every day? Even now that the stock is $350 a share? If they are able to do that I have to question the “little guy” tag.

Matt Levine's email today estimates retail investors to be about 30% of total volume (with actual data from Citadel), but retail was net selling on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So theoretically retail is enough to move the price if they were truly united, but that isn't actually the case. It's just not sexy to say "I bought in for a couple days and am taking my gains" in a public forum.

Why do you think "hedge funds" are not? The small ones that were caught in a bad position at the beginning? Sure, they probably didn't.

But most other funds, or trading desks, or market makers, or brokerages (etc) are most likely printing money right now.

... what? My comment is literally saying hedge funds (like Citadel...) are profiting off this.

You're right, I misread. My apologies.

> It boggles the mind people think hedge funds can't profit off a mad rush like this...

How exactly would they do it? Shorting it again would involve calling the top for a stock whose price recently has been unpredictable, but very high.

Writing options seems nuts for something this volatile. I guess they could "buy volatility" with a straddle but again what would the numbers have to be on this where they turn a profit? It's not like the rest of the market is underestimating the volatility, it's evident to everyone.

Volatility makes the HFT's money. Hundreds of millions of shares are flying around the past few days. Thats not from a bunch of people buying and holding. They make money on fractions of a percent swings. They can make a lot of money on 50% swings.

The other thing is, the price WILL go down eventually. Even if not today. A fund with billions of dollars can afford to sit on a short of GME at $400 for a long time. Longer than the upward pressure will last. The narrative was that the short squeeze will happen today, and prices will skyrocket. You only had to be in it for a little while. Now the narrative is changing, and it will maybe be next week, or even farther out. Sure the meme is to hold forever, but anyone holding any amount that will maybe make a difference are going to see that life changing number and sell eventually.

One of my neighborhood friends is a HFT guy and he says he makes bank off fractions of a dollar. Not all trading is equal obviously. But he said sometimes it's like 3,4,5 decimals places deep that he is watching the stock prices and trading

I would be completely out of my depth implying I understand all the creative ways different hedge funds make money, but there's a lot more tricks in the bag than "short it" and "write options"

Just look at Citadel... how much money do you think they've made off early access to majority of retail orders for GME as RH exploded?

And how much more money will they make on an ongoing basis after this from all the new users?

The volume has been insane, someone is making money besides retail investors, and they won't be the ones left holding the bag after the musical chairs stop...

‘People’ don’t know what hedge funds do.

hedge funds put in some money. They lost. Yeah. But automated trading solutions quickly flip things around. If they are smart. Losing money is literally part of what they do. Some they lose some they win. The success is winning a bit more than you lose, and very frequently.