Is what happened with GameStop a depiction of the power of retail investors or was it simply hedge funds manipulating the narrative? If you guessed the latter, you are in the same camp I am. Having worked in the hedge fund industry, I can tell you that there is no industry I know of that is more competitive, packed with brilliant people and ruthless. Hedge fund behemoths are entrusted with billions of dollars by people who run the country and run the world. Hedge fund behemoths have access to just about anything they desire. In the case of GameStop, they had (and still have) access to retail investor trades before they were executed. Hedge funds pay hefty sums of money to retail brokerage firms to gain access to their clients order flow. Why? These hedge funds want to front run you with their algorithms and do; it is a gold mine for them. You want to buy MSFT or GOOG or whatever, you enter the number of shares you want to buy and then click “submit trade.” That trade is routed to the algorithms operated by the hedge funds first and to the exchange second. The funds clip fractions of pennies billions of times a day.

In the case of GameStop, there sure seemed to be a grudge in play. My guess is Gabe Plotkin of Melvin Capital Management did something to irritate Steve Cohen and/or the people behind Citadel. Plotkin learned quickly that he should never mess with behemoths like Steve Cohen and Citadel. Citadel has access to retail brokerage trades and in my opinion worked with Steve Cohen to blow up Plotkin. I believe a short squeeze was orchestrated by a series of large funds causing Plotkin and others short GameStop, financial pain. Let’s be honest, GameStop is a joke of a company. I know many people who are/were short GME and they didn’t deserve to get their bells rung. They unfortunately fell into the firing line of a beef that they likely didn’t know existed. A similar outcome occurred when Bill Ackman irritated Carl Icahn and Carl Icahn took Bill Ackman to the cleaners on Herbalife. 

So what really happened? What happened, in my opinion, was Icahn and Citadel initiated a short squeeze by enrolling some members of the media into pushing a false narrative. This false narrative was that of retail investors taking it to the “big bad” hedge funds. Retail investors do not have the firepower to take it to multi-billion dollar hedge funds which have access to pretty much unlimited credit. Once the pain was too great for Plotkin, he folded and accepted a bailout from Citadel and Steve Cohen. Steve Cohen and Citadel gained access to Plotkin’s client list and also received some sort of revenue cut from the fund. My guess is the clients Plotkin have/had are jumping ship given how publicized the GME circus has become and Plotkin learned a life lesson. The media of course is still running with the “David v Goliath'' narrative which is great. 

So there you have it. Fun stuff right? 

As for tickers I am watching:  AAU.V, SSVR.V, CEI, FRSX, JAGX, GBS, CURR, PPCB  & TZA