[mlthoughts2018]

They did halt both buying and selling of net new positions. They did not halt adjustments of existing positions (calls & shorts).

This was actually a very fair, by-the-books standard trading halt. It just happened to benefit the short sellers who had been squeezed because they could easily find people willing to sell.

You definitely could still buy GME if you found some extremely random call option holder who needed to sell to cover their position. This would not be changing a net new position, just like selling to someone looking to cover a previous short, and this was never blocked - it’s just there was no volume for this, nobody owned calls and needed to sell.