What is the Real Short Interest of GameStop?

2 Feb 2021

Who can't stop looking at Wall Street Bets these days? That site is hilarious.

After yesterday's tortured 30% selloff in GameStop, now there is a lot of speculation about what is going to happen today and what the real short interest is of GME and other notable names.

So data analytics IHS Markit NYSE:INFO yesterday reported that they calculated that the short interest of GameStop had fallen radically to 39% yesterday, down from over 110% last week. The American financial media is reporting today that many hedge funds have been covering their shorts since yesterday, leading to a decline in the short interest.

However, who really believes this number? It's a bit suspicious isn't it? If you check with many brokers, THERE ARE NO STILL NO SHARES OF GAMESTOP AVAILABLE TO SHORT.

If GameStop short interest had really collapsed yesterday, then why aren't there ANY shares available to lend? Maybe, just maybe IHS Markit is wrong about what the short interest is! But this is an unproven allegation as its possible certain brokers have a pool of shares available to lend, however the lack of shares for lend at many brokers is certainly a point of note.

It's the same story with AMC which also barely budged yesterday. But again, lots of US brokers have ZERO SHARES AVAILABLE OF AMC TO SHORT.

So GameStop and AMC are both selling off hard premarket today, around 20% each, but premarket has low liquidity, so if the real short interest is higher than is being reported by IHS, it's possible that another short squeeze could occur if the Reddit Army of Wall Street Bets focuses their efforts and buys in again en masse (it's also possible the stock could keep collapsing). According to media reports, Robinhood is still limiting trades of GameStop to a total holding of 20 shares per customer (as well as some other stocks like AMC), so if this changes, it could affect GameStop too.

Y'all probably also been hearing about a surge in the silver price and especially the most famous silver ETF SLV This silver ETF surged 7% yesterday and it's selling off premarket, but the silver market is so much bigger than AMC, GameStop, and other hot names like KOSS BBBY NOKBB so it's highly unlikely the silver price and its most famous ETF are gonna move nearly as much as these stocks.

In conclusion, the battle over GameStop isn't necessarily over just yet.

This article is brought to you by Tiger Brokers, a leading online brokerage that has partnered with TradingView to provide US markets brokerage services to TradingView clients in Singapore and Malaysia. Tiger Brokers is a subsidiary of Nasdaq listed: TIGR.