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by clarkevans 1969 days ago
Hard data on outstanding shorts is posted semi-monthly, and even that data is probably stale a week or so. Daily regulatory reporting of short positions doesn't exist. Thus, assertions that "the squeeze has not yet occurred" should be treated with caution. It might be true, but it might also be a mirage.

There are various firms that look at market transaction data to estimate outstanding short positions. However, they rely upon various assumptions since firms don't report how may shares they purchased to cover shorts. Hence, claims that GME is 130% oversubscribed or any other assessment could be wildly off from reality.

Also note retail investors are around 15% of GME. Most shares are held by institutional investors. What's going on isn't David vs Goliath, the situation is more diffuse.

2 comments

There is a company, S3 Partners, that is tapped into many large WS players that has daily short data. It is not perfectly accurate but is largely so. They sell this data, of course, and publish tidbits of data about salient stocks on Twitter [0]

0: https://twitter.com/ihors3

0:

And they also really can't model the depth of the possible ways to close a short position, e.g. synthetic long positions, swaps, and other fancy financial wizardry that is above and beyond just buying one share per share you're short immediately.
Interesting, thanks for the link!