I would rename this, "stands in swan poop".

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I don't think those swans knew how to react.

Sorry to be the little grey raincloud on this Hate The Hedges party, but you might want to understand the implications of what just happened

Y'know that fund that's getting all attention, Melvin Capital? Yeah, fuck them, right? Fuckin' shorters all shortin' and shit -- they played, they paid!

There's a reason they were bailed out and with all due haste.

Here's the issue: they were VERY good at the shorting game. So good that they actually had to turn away business. They made money like horses makes shit. When clients couldn't get in at Melvin, they went elsewhere. That opened the door to a lot of other firms basically mirroring exactly what MC was doing, which included shorting the fuck outta GME.

Fuck those guys too, right? It's their money, so why should I care?

Let's go back a few year, shall we, to the glorious chapter in finance and economics that was the 2008 Crash. Remember when Paulson lost his shit because he realized that in about 36 hours, the basic system called Western Capitalism was going to shit the bed; the bedroom; the whole house and pretty much every surface above the ocean within a planetary radius? This is sorta like that. Only worse.

The thing about short squeezes is that the losses can be infinite, and that's exactly why WallStreetBets did what they did. They knew if they bought and held -- diamond hands -- the stock would have to rise as the shorters had to cover their bets. Melvin Capital and a shit-ton of other, smaller firms had to do that and ran out of liquidity long before GME was even at $50. For every share of stock they shorted, they need to cough up another share at a higher value -- and they HAD to actually have the higher-priced share.

And here's where things get VERY ugly.

Shorting GME was such a sure thing that a huge number of shorts were placed. In fact, more shares of GME were shorted than actually existed. Oops. But hey, SURE THING, BABY and what's the worst that can happen?

Yeeeah, y'see where this is going now?

So these firms, not only are they broke, they don't have the shares, either. They need to come up with shares, pronto, at any price, because contractual obligations are a motherfucker in the finance world. But again, more shorts than there are shares and the people who have the shares, WSB and 4chan's /biz/, aren't letting them go. The longer they hold, the higher the price will go as short after short faces having to cough up the shares they borrowed.

A lot of people are about to lose a LOT of money -- the kinda losses that have so many zeros attached that looking at the number bores the eyes.

Back to 2008: the reason the whole world almost started Mad Max LARPing back then is that a narrow number of highly-important financial institutions were a wee bit thin on liquidity because they were having to pay it out by the boatload. That's bad. What would be better is if risk were more distributed, and how could that little plan POSSIBLY go wrong? Maybe a Black Swan event involving a huge amount of money that needs to be paid out by all of them due to this annoying bird.

That's where we are now, but no one even remotely knows what that figure is going to be. Again, (potentially) infinite losses multiplied by 150% times the number of shares actually available, multiplied by the dogshit risk factor on the loans and the leveraged payouts -- your best case scenario might be a loss of about $500 billion. Someone has to come up with that money, be it the Fed or other banks/investors, but that latter group has to come up with the money themselves, which is generally accomplished by selling profitable holdings. We all know what happens when a lot of people have to sell, right?

I always wanted to live in interesting times, thus proving what an utter fuckwit I am.

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honestly, that's a nice thought, tho' it's dubious if the president ever figures anything out. losing? he's lost. the presidency, his little mind, and any chance of finishing 2nd in the worst president ever title.

check out axios on hbo interview...

https://www.businessinsider.com/axios-hbo-interview-donald-trump-jonathan-swan-full-video-highlights-2020-8

antisocial, hysteric, narcissistic, borderline, compulsive...what a total liar.

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I got up early and cooked a 22lb turkey for over 5 1/2 hours. Rosemary butter all over and injected in the breasts, and nothing else. Turned out great, flavorful and juicy.
Right after it came out, my new oven died, so I had to abandon the already made but uncooked apple pie. Not a big deal, as there were 4 half pies left over when everyone left.

My brother brought his corgie who immediately did a few full speed laps of the yard before performing a beautiful horizontal swan dive into my pond. I gave it an 8.7.

Happy roast a dinosaur for genocide day, everyone.

A Latino friend pointed out how ridiculous it is that comb, bomb and tomb all have the letter "o" pronounced differently. Same with the "a" in swan and swam.

Nerf swans!

I may be the only one who thinks like this, but it reminds of Taleb's Thanksgiving Turkey analogy:

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nassim-talebs-black-swan-thanksgiving-turkey-2014-11?r=US&IR=T

Swans also aren't typically made of silver either, so there may be some artistic license at play.

@wraith -- out of sheer curiosity, I googled it. Some Swan organization says they eat insects and molluscs also.

So maybe those weren't little fishies? Maybe they were huge insects? Or mobile shellfish?

But swans are herbivores!