3/16/2021 GME Open Interest Report
I'M AN IDIOT. THIS IS JUST DATA THAT MAY BE USELESS. THIS ISN'T FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.
TL:DR: The option shorts are pulling out all the stops to keep the price down because they are fucked on the options side of things at certain levels. After $300, it starts getting really bad really fast for them and it spirals out of control. (Added per comment)
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Here is today's Open Interest Report and Total Exposure for weeks with significant open interest as of market open and based on Friday's closing price of 220.14. (OI data is not real time; we only know OI after close).
Posting here for the first time. If you like it (and it doesn't get blocked), I'll continue posting here as well as my other board. For the background of this post and all of the weaknesses of this stupid analysis, scroll down to the end.
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For all open contracts at close of business yesterday and yesterday's closing price of 220.14, total exposure decreased to $2.546 billion down from $3.084 billion yesterday. 87% of that exposure is tied up in the options shown in the Figures and Tables expiring Friday ($925 million), 4/16 ($691 million), 7/16 ($306 million), and 1/21/22 ($288 million). See Figure 1 and Table 1.
In terms of actual shares needed to cover short options that are in the money, our hypothetical single actor will need to find 11.5 million shares of GME (or their equivalents) to cover their positions across all open ITM positions. This is approximately 21% of the float of GME and 16% of all shares outstanding. See Figure 2 and Table 2. This is down from 14.8 million shares needed to cover yesterday.
LIMITATIONS/WEAKNESSES/BACKGROUND:
This is the result of a thought experiment asking a simple question: If a hypothetical single actor/market maker was on the short side of all open options in GME, which means that he cannot simultaneously hold any long positions himself, what would that single actor's exposure be in terms of dollars? How many shares would that single actor need to find to cover all of the short positions?
Note that this does not represent this market maker's "loss." To sell an option, this hypothetical market maker received a premium as it does not take into account the premium the actor received for taking this short position.
Also, it also assumes that the actor has not already started purchasing/selling shares on the open market to cover short positions.
Finally, a major weakness of this curiosity is that, by its nature, it precludes the use of other long option positions to cover their short positions (since this hypo is set up with one guy being short on everything). In reality, we have multiple market makers who are constantly hedging themselves with other option contracts in the variety of neutral option strategies that exist for all options traders.