#roaring kitty

[Above: In the 2015 movie The Big Short, Margot Robbie explains how short selling works while sitting in a bubble bath. I figured this picture was close enough.]

In a normal short squeeze, investors who go "short" on a company get caught by an unanticipated rise in the share price. Short investors bet against the company, selling borrowed shares at today's prices, with the assumption that it'll be cheaper to buy back those shares later to reimburse the lender. If the price instead goes up, the short investor is left scrambling to close their position as soon as possible, to minimize their losses. But that scramble creates more demand to buy, driving the price up even higher, applying more pressure to more short sellers.

MOASS is based on the assumption that this cascade effect can go on forever, under the right circumstances. For this to work, you need to believe the financial world is run by evil hedge funds that have built up absurdly risky short positions on companies like GameStop or AMC Theaters. These evildoers, or "hedgies," expect this short attack to drive the targeted companies into bankruptcy, so they can afford to do illegal things like shorting shares that don't actually exist. What the hedgies could not have foreseen, however, is the rise of r/WallStreetBets (and related subreddits), which made a meme out of building absurdly risky long positions on failing companies.

As the 2021 short squeeze played out, memestock investors latched onto catchphrase "apes together strong." That is, much like the simians in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, they had the power to band together and drive their enemies to their knees. As long as the "Apes" keep buying and holding (against all conventional wisdom and common sense), then the hedgies can't control the share price. Eventually the hedgies have to start closing short positions that they can't afford to cover. Since the Apes refuse to sell, and since the hedgies allegedly owe more shares than there are to buy, the price would skyrocket and never come back down. The hedgies go bankrupt, and yadda yadda yadda, the Apes become rich beyond their wildest dreams.

[Above: In principle, achieving MOASS with GameStop's share price would potentially cause the collapse of the stock market, if not the entire global economy. As far as Apes are concerned, this would be a good thing.]

You may have some questions at this point! I know I certainly do. For one thing, after taking a beating in 2021, why would hedge funds go short on GameStop for three more years, instead of switching to some other, less volatile target? If the hedgies can't cover their naked shorts without paying millions per share, wouldn't it become easier to declare bankruptcy than pay a dime to the Apes? And since MOASS relies on ever-increasing demand for a fixed supply of floating shares, what happens if GameStop decides to issue, say, 45 million new shares, whenever they feel like it?

I'm not sure Apes have ever addressed these questions, or that they ever will. At this point, they're so committed to their crusade against Wall Street that they're suspicious of anyone who interrogates it. If you don't understand their cause, or their strategy, then you're either blind to what's really going on, or you're a fifth columnist sowing disinformation.

In this regard, the Apes aren't too different from Gamergate and QAnon. All three movements revolve around a Big Lie, and use Reddit/4chan culture to create a decentralized campaign to promote that lie. That campaign rests upon a populist mythology about how the establishment and the elites underestimated the resourcefulness of "anons," "gamers," "deplorables," "bakers," and/or "weaponized autism." When these groups think they're winning, it's undeniable proof that the Big Lie is true. When it looks like they're losing, it's because a vast conspiracy is desperate enough to stoop to any level to keep you from learning the Big Lie is true. So one way or another, they're constantly reassuring themselves that they're winning, and seeking that reassurance becomes their primary activity. This in turn enables grifters to shape these movements by finding creative ways to tell them what they want to hear.

Unfortunately we're probably going to be seeing more of this stuff going forward, not less. Since going public in March, Trump Media & Technology Group has behaved like a meme stock, pumped up by retail investors who are less interested in financial planning than in signaling their allegiance to Donald Trump. When the stock fell off, CEO Devin Nunes seemed to take a page from the apes' playbook, blaming the decline on naked short selling.

[Above: Brainworms recognize brainworms]