Lurker > Lopen

Nice job on the early clears of hell house and the sub 30s

SSJSephirothGokuX123 posted...

anima lens+ are basically worthless at this point

Yeah. I've been noticing this too. Seems to be a problem this game has-- it floods currency types without enough to spend it on.

Of course if we could just use anima lens+ on scrolls of honing like the other lenses that would solve the problem. Not sure why that hasn't been done yet. I'd trade 250 or 500 of them for a scroll of honing.

Better Call Saul is like Breaking Bad with slightly better pacing but lower highs

I'd still take Breaking Bad though on the whole, and pretty easily at that. I actually forgot the series hadn't finished yet which is telling.

Now imagining this fight taking place in the jungle

Mantis can't hurt DK and plinks off him endlessly by throwing random plants, rocks, and small animals at him
DK can't hit him, eventually starts to ignore him and go about his day

DK is eventually able to win as Mantis starves to death

All depends on terrain. Mantis doesn't have a ton of telekinetic power like he's basically just limited to throwing things and force push things. DK could probably shrug off small objects all day. His mind reading also is functionally a bit limited in that if it's implausible to dodge he wouldn't really be able to.

If there isn't a lot of beefy stuff to toss at DK Mantis loses. If the terrain is too small for Mantis to maneuver he loses. Otherwise he eventually wins.

A liquidity issue isn't a liquidity issue if you're doing a hard audit of shares to distribute a dividend though

Most spinoff situations don't have huge chains of synthetics which is why you don't see this often. They're in something like IBM or Pfizer. Big companies that don't really have a point to try and short into the earth because they aren't going out of business ever.

I mean the problem is that in the real non-hypothetical world there's not a flawless chain of accounting and Funds B-Z are all lending shares out to short that they themselves are borrowing, you're not going to resolve it so cleanly. Like I'm not going into a hypothetical but if there's a chain where you've got I dunno Fund X lending to Fund C and D and then Fund C borrowing from D, do you think at each step we're auditing to make sure that the share can trace back to a real share from Fund A.

Ultimately if you're heavy in synthetics this kinda stuff is just going to happen. It's not as simple as A goes to B goes to C goes to etc. Things are going to be naked by accident or on purpose, because you've got the real shares technically being returned but a circular chain of synthetic shorts backed by a call which may or may not be naked.

Free btw VI

Hela
Happy

I mean you do know that with Volkswagen Porsche is literally apes right.

If you have 12% short interest and 95% of the float owned by people who aren't selling what do you think 12% short shares come from. That's a combined total of 107%-- that last 7% (and probably much more-- 12% reported of 5% is worse than GME's short interest ever was) is what? Synthetic.

red sox 777 posted...

I think you're missing the big picture here. The point is, why should the share price move up like that? Why wouldn't it stay at $20 forever and let market makers feast on options premiums? Because the market saw the short interest number and started thinking a squeeze was likely, rather than extremely unlikely. Without the GME surge the AMC surge probably never happens, and it wouldn't matter how crazy the option chains were. There would just be no expectation that the price would move.

The bigger picture here is that synthetics were the reason it squeezed that hard combined with a lot of people who weren't phased by the market maker driving the price down (paper hands are what allow the synthetic positions to eventually become covered over time) to flush them out.

The ingredients are for the MOASS squeeze are:

1. Synthetic shares
2. People holding through low prices.
3. Catalyst for the price to move up. (if your force removal of synthetics as in the case of OSTK/BBIG, 1 and 3 are the same thing)

That's the common thread between all MOASS, be it Overstock or Volkswagen or AMC or GME. Reported SI number being high is why GME had 2 and 3, but that's not the reason it squeezed in and of itself. AMC's SI was actually never that high. But the synthetics were absolutely there.

Right. My point is synthetics as a whole are created by unusual options activity. Synthetics are allowed to be created due to options contracts. When they're deep in the money puts or out of the money calls, it's basically a license to fiddle with short interest and the price as you see fit, regardless of whether positions are closed or open. Synthetic shorts don't have to be reported, but if they short a synthetic long that isn't reported, why are you assuming a synthetic short is reported any more than a synthetic long is?

The only reason anyone had to cover in GME is because the stock price ultimately got to the point where all the options used to play the games were put in the money (or out of the money in the case with puts) where the synthetic shares and because subtlety was thrown out the window in a desperate attempt to drive it back under the price where the options to hedge the synthetic were. Jan 4th was when it reached peak. The following weeks leading into the squeeze it was actually lower. In fact, the funny thing about GME is the second time it squeezed in February the reported interest was actually around 20-30%. But why did it run in February? Do you think it just naturally did that? I think short positions that were still in play were being closed, using the higher springboard options created by the first run up (900 strike, 950 strike) as the hedge for the second round of synthetics.

Anyway the point is the reported interest is almost meaningless in terms of actual numbers-- synthetic shorts created by market makers don't have to be reported. But like, creating synthetic shares is a process that takes time-- if the price gets driven above the full option chain then it just adds fuel to the fire.

Like if you want my thinking of how GME worked.

You look at the available option chains available late 2020, they probably all capped around 20-30. That's because the price hadn't been above 20 for years. So you've got this thing where the strikes of 20-30 are being used to keep shorting it into the earth while keeping reported short interest relatively low. Now the price moves to 30 in spite of that. To combat that you add options of 60, and use those as your base, repeat the process. When 60 failed but one week afterwards, then you're screwed-- if AMC had jumped to $145 after $70 you would have seen it reach super high numbers like GME did too. I think the key was AMC was a bit more aggressive with opening up those higher strikes than GME was, so it never reached the higher levels. AMC actually diluting helped too.

Anyway GME had no "forced closure of synthetic shares" play on the table. That's the difference. They had to manually jump through those option barriers-- BBIG doesn't need to do that. But your warning signs that it's occurring is when there's buzz among retail investors and the price relentlessly goes down and the short interest goes up and down repeatedly. That's what you saw in AMC. In GME you saw super high percentages because of imo a bookkeeping/reporting error, but the percentages literally don't matter once they're sufficiently high long enough.

Note how AMC has 37000 open interest on the 1/20/2023 call strike 145 and how GME has 18k 950c. That's a red flag-- that's not degenerate gamblers playing options (60c on AMC gives you hundreds of times over the profit at basically any price reached, so WSB gamblers would not target that) that's synthetic short share collateral. The reason the 2023 is so high vs others is because the other chains weren't available at the time when it was running.

You see this in a lot of stocks, not just high SI stocks, but the key is the sustained short interest over time and unusual options activity rather than the reported number, when it comes to detecting synthetics. If short interest goes up and down 10s of percents week to week and the price is barcoding or going down, then no one covered anything and likely the short position is increasing.

And this is the end of your episode of tinfoil hat with Lopen. Next episode hopefully I'll be pointing at a $30 stock price and telling you "see???"

The market maker has to short sell shares to remain delta neutral when puts are purchased. Deep OTM calls can also be bought and then also used as collateral to short a stock you don't actually own, because your call covers the position. Anyway the gist is shorts "cover" then buy deep otm puts to force the market maker to short, reducing the reported short interest but not actually changing the short interest. Thing is, market maker doesn't actually need to locate shares to short. They can literally just create shares to short to provide "liquidity". The dark pool is also being heavily abused these days to really obfuscate what price buys and sells were made at, and how many of each. The dark pool volume for BBIG this week has been at 70%, which is ridiculous.

If you look at AMC and GME price action you would see these pop up in large amounts as short positions are "covered"

The reason GME was able to have short interest over 100% was entirely because of this. Deep ITM/OTM calls and puts let you do dumb stuff with the bookkeeping which in theory don't matter unless you call the bluff by putting the price over the price where they're doing that stuff. The mechanics absolutely matter because the mechanics drive the numbers. GME reported numbers going up so much were mostly because the price went to $30 which was over a lot of the full chains in place. They had to legitimately short to try and push the price below their synthetic short position-- when that was found to be impossible, all the synthetics had to be covered. The reported number ballooning isn't really that important, it's what caused the price action beforehand.

Like people like mentioning GME, but realize the reported short interest when AMC ran from 3 to 20, and 8 to 72, was quite low relative to Gamestop, and it was all the same kinda stuff-- people just got better at hiding the numbers in the bookkeeping (I suspect there was a gaffe somewhere in the GME process too). Like I don't know all the mechanics offhand as I kinda just filed it away as "look for this because it's suspicious", and really no one does know the exact mechanics that allow this, but it's kind of a where there's smoke there's fire kinda thing. There's no reason for instance you'd want to have like 5000 deep itm puts on BBIG with 1 week until expiry (slightly ITM would basically do the same thing as a legitimate position to profit if the stock goes down), but this has happened multiple times during the past six months. Overstock was probably doing the same kinda stuff when it ran from $3 to $120 but there were less people combing the data then to know.

Loki
Hawkeye

Also the really big thing is to distribute a dividend like that synthetic shorts by definition need to be closed-- there is no actual way around it as you need to find who has the shares to give them their dividend.

Seeing the stupidly high open interest on a lot of deep in the money put positions is your evidence there. As is reported short interest going down and the price not going up.

Tinfoil hat yeah, but there were things to learn from GME and AMC as far as how the price movement tends to go. That's why I'm excited to be in before the moonshot. Once the share price moves the option premium on literally every strike is going to from pennies to dollars in a hurry.

The things you have to realize with this play

Options are at a small premium and have huge open interest. This one got no sold but July and next Jan have massive chains
Tyde forces closure of short positions pretty much. There are ways around it but it's not easy.
Short interest is underreported-- market makers are using tricks with deep in the money puts to create synthetic shorts.
The price is being massively suppressed by dark pool right now. Basically brokers are giving people shares in their accounts but not actually buying them, so there's a huge imbalance of buys. Eventually they need to actually deliver those shares, which will cause a surge, that will compound with option interest needing to be hedged.

People like to romance about how GME was retail and blah blah. And I mean, it was, but the options were always what drove that play, not apes diamond handing shares. Diamond handing is what cuts the escape route. We still have apes diamond handing shares but the big thing is eventually the dark pool bill becomes due and then all the options that are being bought and sold at pennies are suddenly in the money.

The only escape plan was dilution before Tyde, but that vote has been moved out. So yeah I'm not worried. I just hate that I wasn't able to cash any out because my tax bill is rather large and I was hoping to get like 10k out here at least, not realize 15000 losses.

I still have a lot of options on the table and I'll make out like a bandit if it hits ATH by July or even October, but I'd be lying if I said this doesn't hurt a lot.

In particular the batch of $3.50 options I bought last month really stings.

However I am actually loading up July calls today if it doesn't moonshot. Earnings is tomorrow, there is a conference call Monday pre-market

If we get Tyde news Monday pre-market, it could run. The timing is key. Bullish news at the start of the week is common.

RIP 15k it looks like

I could see it surging inexplicably towards end of day but it's looking like not

Ride or die !!

Loki
Thor

Actually that's entirely my point

It's hedge funds etc dumping the stocks to try and get retail investors to panic sell. Retail is not moving the stock.

How successful it is is questionable because it generally bounces right back but yeah. The fact that it bounces right back kinda drives home the point that it's artificial movement to spook people.

I have a Yuna AASB2 at rank 15 since she was initially going to be my dragonking offrealm counter. Actually used the Roaming Warrior chain and Tidus's realm chain despite having Wakka's fullbreak counter chain (don't like 99 cap and yeah resetting the chain for fullbreaks is a pain)

Quina + Wakka would probably overpower it alright though. Tidus was actually able to shred rage levels with king's guard up if I used C2 on his sync which was funny.

Trying other realms is proving tricky though. Can't slot Quina and a healer and a full break counter in many realms so I'll have to maybe be creative for the other one. Barret can actually do this in FFVII. My Aeris is kinda not very good though. I dunno.

Got Zidane's good ATBhax Sync from the fest ticket from beating that

Quina found Zidane for me lol. I'm okay with that. I don't like Zidane but in FF9 you use who you have to cause the whole cast is bad. Don't think he makes the cut on my wind team.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/6/3/AAAlMSAADIQn.jpg

Finally beat a dragonking! Now that it's thoroughly powercrept. Decided to try and go crit nuts because I have Wakka AASB2 and got Tidus Dual Awakening this fest. Quina is so strong since I have their Sync and Awakening and Glint+ (have never drawn for Quina just lucked into it over time). Didn't even need to play around the stupid crystal gimmick just punched him in the face alot so he didn't do the megaflare stuff. I never even broke King's Rage.

Almost wanna just try this team for water team content. Seems like it'd be potent. Rare for me to do this kinda content sub 30 on my first try.

If you really love and want more Skyrim I would highly recommend playing it on the PC and looking into gameplay mods instead. You'll find a lot more interesting things there than you will on any console version.

If anyone is curious about my final positions on BBIG

I have expiring Thursday

19 20c
61 13c
100 10c
52 8c
9 7c
127 5c
147 4c
203 3.5c
15 3c

Total market value of about 15k ready to vaporize. I've basically already felt the pain of this vaporizing though because the values in my portfolio are super small at this point.

Now the funny thing is if the price gets even a bit over $4 I end green, but... you know, 15k, yeah, it would hurt. But what can you do. I have shares and July, October, January calls still in place, so still like my position even if I lose all of this. Would obviously rather not lose it but ride or die as they say.

Side note I still like BBIG to gamma this week.

Price and volume action seems similar to what it was back last September when it ran from $2.70 to $6 in one day. To a lesser extent the January run as well, but I suspect January was a trap/pump and dump at this point to get people more scared about this chain, which actually will be run.

Regardless, the volume always seems to dry up before the run, and today we were at 13m, which is a long time low by a good margin. Yesterday was 16m. We've generally been getting mid 20s.

What's more, this is a more juiced option chain-- granted, the float is larger too, so it kinda offsets. However, because of the float being larger, warrants can't really suffocate it, they've basically been exercised.

I'm hoping it starts running tomorrow, but feel reasonably confident it'll at least clear $5 even if it doesn't run till Thursday. Earnings call needs to be announced Wednesday or Thursday or they get fined-- the earnings call itself doesn't matter, we know what they're going to say. Balance sheet is bad because they've been buying shit. However "good guidance" could be excuse to run the price. Tyde could also be addressed during the call, or announced at any time really, which is another excuse to run the price.

I really have this feeling they want the 10c ITM by Thursday. Way too much open interest there. Hopefully we get an ER on Thursday pre-market announcement today or tomorrow. That would have everything click into place.

Right

I guess my point is a lot of macro issues have caused micro price action lately.

The problem is if it's a macro issue, it's largely already priced in. Like yes inflation could be a problem long term, but it's not going to make people dump their stocks during a fed talk.

So ultimately it's fake price movement, even if the overall trend isn't necessarily.

You can if you like but I understand stuff comes up so no big.

Thank you.

Scary!

Ned (for Hela)
Grandmaster Goldblum

Point is not that no selling is legitimate.

Point is that the news causing mass sell offs is fake. Mass sell offs are what cause mass sell offs. The news is just the cover.

No one gives a damn about an inflation report. What people give a damn about is the value of their stocks going down. Being able to attribute it to a news event is a psychological ploy, not actual cause and effect.

The difference is subtle, and all in the chain of events.

One is bad news -> fake price action with news as the perceived reason -> people panic sell

Other is bad news -> legitimate price action based on news -> people panic sell

My point is not so much that the Covid dip wasn't at all legitimate as much as market makers and hedge funds saw how lucrative it all was and are trying to exploit that by making literally any bad news cause huge dumps even when it isn't logical.

Why pfof is so insidious is because while dumps can't be controlled by PFOF, slowly covering short positions after the fact absolutely can be, so you have this loophole in how orders resolve that is able to be exploited by people who want the price low to suffocate a stock.

red sox 777 posted...

What manipulation? That's what I don't get. You're saying that hedge funds are like Russian propagandists, that they are subtly influencing retail to sell stocks?

Not subtly but yes.

The market maker has some degree of freedom to fabricate buying and selling in the name of liquidity.

Short selling exists as a thing regardless of whether you believe short squeeze hype or not.

If you want to actually sell a stock you're not shorting it, you're selling it.

Also with payment for order flow existing as a thing, prices can move in ways because brokers are routing your orders sequences selectively in ways that make the price move in the way they want it to. For instance if one guy sells 100 shares at $2.72, and two guys buy 100 shares at $2.73, if you resolve the $2.72 last the price shows as $2.72. All people get their shares but the price shown doesn't reflect what supply and demand is.

Also for your Apple to Evri example, the prices as a whole (indexes) shouldn't decrease if people are reinvesting funds. If people are taking money out of the market the total value of the market decreases, so the market goes down. Otherwise you would logically just be moving money out of Apple into Evri. One market cap goes down the other up.

Also the ramifications of Russia to anyone but Russia are completely overblown

We are going to have some difficulty with fuel (not enough to justify the huge rate increase at the pump though) and some difficulty with food and agriculture related stuff.

That's not going to crash the economy, and inflation sure as hell isn't either.

It's just a big ball of manipulation. Buy the dip and win or stay out because it's a sham anyway. Whichever.

Hela
Mantis

My whole point is they absolutely caused that. They saw an opportunity to crash the market and jumped on it. Now with the rise of the retail investor it's just an endless string of excuses to dump stocks-- but if people were actually selling stocks you'd see different price action. It wouldn't be a super volatile jagged line.

Let's ignore Tesla. Let's look at Apple or Microsoft. They both dumped 30% when Coronavirus fear was at its peak. Why would that happen. Thinking about you as a person, why does a virus make you lose faith in your investment. Is the coronavirus going to make computers stop being used? Is their bottom line really going to matter all that much? Their profits just kept going up-- you want to say it's all the fed pumping money into it that allowed those companies which shouldn't have cared about a pandemic to increase profit margins be my guest but I really don't think so.

On a broad strokes level yes. Over time these should cause specific stocks to decrease, and even broader indexes if many of the contained stocks lose value. For instance the coronavirus tanking travel stocks was totally legitimate. The coronavirus tanking I don't know like, Tesla? Is it real or is it just market makers and hedge funds attempting to induce mass hysteria?

Biden giving us a speech we knew was coming and having a deep red day isn't logical though. News events simply don't matter on a day to day level like that-- people thinking they do is why active traders lose money in the stock market on average. It's all an elaborate psychological game and you only win if you know the rules and have the fortitude to play them out.

Loki
Hawkeye

I'm talking about the market tanking in general. Inflation is the latest excuse after the war and the coronavirus and whatever else. None of it really matters all that much as the market is acting.

BBIG just goes down with any excuses to go down. I'm numb to it at this point and you're right it has nothing to do with anything.

It will hurt if it doesn't move this week though.

I feel like that already happened a month ago? Unless you're saying that we need to stay in it for a while for it to actually reverse

Anyway there is some talk about inflation rates today is the latest fear spreading tool. We'll see how it all goes. Still haven't sold any BBIG calls or shares, still think it's going to go on a total tear either Wednesday or Thursday (following the money-- institutions own this gamma ramp not retail) but we'll see.

I didn't even like MMPR all that much back in the day but I rewatched the first season a couple of years because of a Twitch marathon and it wasn't actually that bad. Kinda enjoyable cheesy schlock.

I really doubt I'd have been able to watch much more than the first season though. Not enough nostalgia and I have to imagine it would just get old. If I grew up with all of it though I wouldn't be surprised if most of it held up.

Garfield was clearly the strongest Spiderman in this environment (and for good reason imo) but I figured Holland would have outlasted Tobey

Was mnk's save for Strange invalid or

Oops lol

Hela
The Grandmaster (free)

Thor
Mantis

Loki
Hawkeye

Loaded up some shares this morning. Only going to float them a few days. If it goes to $7 like I think it'll be an easy +3k though

My best is physical dark
With Dark Cecil and Seifer with dual awakenings and pretty much every artifact, and Shadow and Setzer providing competent backup with easy cap breaks, Aegis counter, and imperils

Followed probably by magic dark
Golbez and Ultimecia with dual awakenings and basically everything else, Kefka and Emperor as strong back ups with everything but dual awakenings

There's a reason I've only beaten Alexander. Although getting Tidus dual awakening makes me think physical water is probably up there now too

Worst I don't know. Physical earth and magic ice are pretty dire. Gotta use the Yang + Ursula crew on earth. Ice not even sure I have slots

Meh.

The only thing that has changed about my theory is that the price hasn't moved. Options are still there. IV is still going up. This stock has run multiple hundreds of percentage points in the past in a matter of days. I'll like my chances. Only put in a few hundred more but because of decay that increased my position considerably.