Peek-a-boo! I see you 79M hidden shorts!
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| Author       | Source       | 
| :-------------: |:-------------:|
|  [u/WhatCanIMakeToday](https://www.reddit.com/user/WhatCanIMakeToday/) | [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/odsded/peekaboo_i_see_you_79m_hidden_shorts/) | 

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[DD 👨‍🔬](https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/search?q=flair_name%3A%22DD%20%F0%9F%91%A8%E2%80%8D%F0%9F%94%AC%22&restrict_sr=1)

tl;dr: I found around 79M can kicked shares in Jan 2021 using the married put approach. We can see those cans kicked out 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months from Jan 2021 at various options expirations.

After poking around in ToS, I found that I can see exactly when Puts where opened by tracking the daily Open Interest for a put. See my previous post here: <https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/ocen11/historical_gme_71421_options_oi_to_see_how_many/>

I needed the data in CSV format so I could play with it. So I bought the GME Options Data (surprisingly cheap, about $21) from <https://www.historicaloptiondata.com/> for 2021 up to end of June.

I then filtered out the lowest strike Put option for each of the major options expirations (Feb, March, April, Jan 2022 leap, and Jan 2023 leap) during that time and charted the daily Open Interest Change.

[Daily OI Change for Lowest Strike Puts](https://preview.redd.it/mfk5o6z1r8971.png?width=1097&format=png&auto=webp&s=26b7024d5072bbb0683b9d9c1a3d34e596ddfa4e)

Guess what? Most of these low strike puts were opened around GME's Jan run up!

*Wut mean?* Superstonk has been discussing how married puts are used to hide naked shorts in deep OTM puts so this data shows us exactly how far out they kicked those Jan naked short cans down the road AND we can see which expirations have them. We can see pretty much every major options expiration has a ton of new openings in Jan so those cans were kicked 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months out (Feb ,March, April, July, Jan 2022, and Jan 2023, respectively).

| *Option* | *As of 1/4/2021* | *As of 2/1/2021* |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Feb $1 Put | 0 | 52,193 |
| March | 0 (n/a) | 32,907 |
| April $0.50 Put | 510 | 43,892 |
| July $0.50 Put | 168 | 71,709 |
| Jan 2022 $0.50 Put | 2,441 | 106,082 |
| Jan 2023 $2 Put | 105 | 16,585 |
| Total | 3,224 | 323,368 |

*Do you see what I see?* There's about 320,000 options opened in Jan 2021 to hide naked shorts and kick those cans *just at the cheapest strike!* That's the equivalent of 32,000,000 (32M) shares!

*Wut about other low strikes?* I filtered the options data for two snapshots in time: Jan 4, 2021 (before can kicking) and Feb 1, 2021 (after can kicking). Out of those snapshots, I summed the total open interest for all options with a strike price less than or equal to $20. Here's the results:

|  | 1/4/2021 | 2/1/2021 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Total Put OI for all strikes <= $20 | 309,563 | 1,101,826 |

The difference there is 792,263 OI. Basically just shy of 800k new put open interest at super low OTM strikes representing over 79M shares kicked down the road in Jan 2021! Half of those are hidden in the lowest strike alone.

Happy July 4th! We're gonna have a blast!

EDIT: Wowza! Thanks everyone! I've never had this many upvotes or awards before! You are all amazing! I learned more in the past 6 months about trading and markets from Superstonk than in decades of trading. I'm happy I can give back to the community!
