How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares
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| Author      | Source | 
|  :----:     |    :----:   |        
| [u/President_Wolfe](https://www.reddit.com/user/President_Wolfe/) | [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/ledjwa/how_there_is_no_mathematical_way_shorts_were/) |

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OC[DD](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/search?q=flair_name%3A%22DD%22&restrict_sr=1)

*EDIT: This post is meant as a mathematical (~Middle School Algebra) exercise regarding GME stock and shorts. The title itself is meant to be the literal end as intended, and describes how it would be impossible for all shorts (estimated) to be covered, closed and completely done and finished, with only using the available outstanding shares on the specific days stated. Please note that I have made no comments on possible options that HF's can/did use as* *I DO NOT HAVE THAT DATA!* *I have, hopefully, labelled the assumptions I made to do these calculations, and pointed out some general assumptions,more shorts mean more gains, sarcastically, that do not always appear to be true in the given data.*

These are just general findings, so chill the fuck out!

Please note that the below plots are all done using publicly available data from FINRA, Jan29th text file ( <http://regsho.finra.org/CNMSshvol20210129.txt>) Feb 5th text file (<http://regsho.finra.org/CNMSshvol20210205.txt>) regarding short volumes and Yahoo Finance for daily volume and GME daily prices.

I promise you the long read is worth it, but the TLDR version is at the bottom in Figure 9. The majority of the text is needed to inform a general audience of how an estimate of over 70 million shorts a day was reached. Please help out if there are any huge oversights, or wrong calculations, in the comments below, as I'm not responding to nearly any chats these days due to all the bots wanting me to either join an illegal conspiracy to raise the price of silver, or just shady as fuck.

Below is just a plot of the daily stock prices at the open and close of trading during regular hours for GME (source Yahoo Finance).

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/hm1mk6i09yf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=1bbe89497fafa8b1d449cf203c66ad2b62cbe111)](https://preview.redd.it/hm1mk6i09yf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=1bbe89497fafa8b1d449cf203c66ad2b62cbe111)

Figure 1: No real new information from this plot that everyone doesn't already know.

So as EVERYONE KNOWS, shorts can cause the price to rise in a given stock as the share of stock must be purchased, and with supply and demand, we aim for the heavens...

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/t8yyps5bayf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=e17249ce1c3e2349d7d082a2690d77bfa4a8c3ad)](https://preview.redd.it/t8yyps5bayf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=e17249ce1c3e2349d7d082a2690d77bfa4a8c3ad)

Figure 2: Shorts and Short Exempts (note y-axis is in MILLIONS) as reported by FINRA during regular business hours.

So let's do a quick sanity check. Looking at Figure 2, we see that on Jan 13th, over 40 MILLION shorts were executed! So if we check Figure 1on Jan 13th, we should expect to see that the price increased, which it did.

Let's look at it a different way and plot the Closing Price minus the Opening Price to see just how much GME stock price changed each day.

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/8dutm3frcyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=458d804b49dea6f728ea29f3946a506a6ac2113b)](https://preview.redd.it/8dutm3frcyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=458d804b49dea6f728ea29f3946a506a6ac2113b)

Figure 3: Overall change in stock price from open to close of GME.

This plot seems to be dominated by the wild changes in price during late January/early February, so let's do a normalization trick by taking the above values and dividing them by their respective opening price that day.

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/iokqj1i4dyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=533c7228e8ff52bbb6cc23fe7bc0a145f0716efe)](https://preview.redd.it/iokqj1i4dyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=533c7228e8ff52bbb6cc23fe7bc0a145f0716efe)

Figure 4: GME Price change relative to the opening price that day.

Now in Figure 4 we can see the change in price relative to what it was starting out on that day. Again we see that Jan 13th increased, by over 50% that day.

So let's make it easier for everyone and combine Figure 2 and Figure 5 to see both the total number of shorts executed, and the price change, for the same day.

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/udf0do41fyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=af67822fa65e5df33bf2b994c30602f7b8582904)](https://preview.redd.it/udf0do41fyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=af67822fa65e5df33bf2b994c30602f7b8582904)

Figure 5: GME Price change relative to opening price, and the total number of shorts(both short and "short exempts") during Regular Business Hours, via FINRA

NOW WE GOT A PLOT! Here we see both the change in price AND the number of shorts being executed for a single day.

But what do we actually get from Figure 5? Jan 13th keeps with our hypothesis that MORE SHORTS MEANS MORE GAINS, but we don't see that across the board though.....?

Jan 13th, Jan 22nd, Jan 26th, and Feb. 5th all show gains in price, and large number of shorts...

22 days I tracked, and 11 of those days have over 10million shorts during regular business hours, but only 4 days have gains of 20% or greater, and only 3 of THOSE days have gains over 50%.....?

Eye Raise:

-   Why hasn't GME reached the Moon with all the Rocket/Shorts Fuel yet?

-"The screaming cries of wallstreetbets"

Hmmmmm, ok, well maybe we should also compare the overall volume of GME also and not just the shorts. The HYPE was/IS real over GME, and the world took notice. Let's see how the volume changed with it.

First, just plot out the daily volume during regular business hours.

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/8401qqamiyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=308bf45b5b5f75766d96d57ca55bbee0b9c873eb)](https://preview.redd.it/8401qqamiyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=308bf45b5b5f75766d96d57ca55bbee0b9c873eb)

Figure 6a: Regular Hours Daily Volume for GME, as reported by FINRA

Alright, what do we get out of this plot...? Well, from Jan 13th and onward the volume shot THROUGH THE FUCKING ROOF, compared to early January.

BUT WAIT A DAMN MINUTE?!?!?!?

I didn't hear about the GME Hype Train until mid to late January!? From what I can find googling it seems that most major news outlets didn't really report on WSB/GME until Jan 21st, with serious mentions coming around Jan 24th weekend.

General Assumption I'M MAKING:

Most of the actual "Retail Investors" didn't join GME until weekend after Jan 22nd.

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/bxnpcbheuyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fe167ab117d9d361f7f2926d85bc837319dcf33)](https://preview.redd.it/bxnpcbheuyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fe167ab117d9d361f7f2926d85bc837319dcf33)

Figure 6b: Full Daily Volume as reported by Yahoo Finance for GME. Note that Figure 6a is contained within Figure 6b.

So, ASSUMING, the above, let's say the higher volume AFTER Jan 25th is from Urist McLossesMoney.

So what's with the crazy high volume before then? Is it from the insiders, the true chosen among us, the users in [r/wallstreetbets](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/) that aren't bots?----->NOPE.

Almost certainly volume before Jan 22nd is from the hedge funds having to buy up the shorts they WAY THE FUCK overextended on! The "big bois" had to join us bottom feeders and buy up the stock to cover their 9000% short shares... maybe.

Anyway we can check something else that to shine some light into what happens during the dark hours of trading... After Hours Volume.

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/dzjkv3zqlyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=30b68bc546184bc5e079101a4c9d9d66b1955365)](https://preview.redd.it/dzjkv3zqlyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=30b68bc546184bc5e079101a4c9d9d66b1955365)

Figure 7: Regular Hours Trading compared against After Hours Trading for GME

I DO LOVE PLOTS!!!! Here, I've taken the regular hours volume(again from FINRA) and subtracted it from the day's total volume, as reported by Yahoo Finance, to get the After Hours Volume. But again what stands out/what's the point of this plot?

After Hours Volume overtakes Regular Hours Volume Jan 22nd, and has remained where MOST of the action is going on!

GENERALLY, "Retail Investors" don't/CANT engage in after hours trading. And also, don't confuse what you do on your trading app at 2am with what broker-dealers and big bois are doing at 2am.

We see around Jan 13th, after hour volume went above 50million, my general dumbass guess is because HF's needed to buy shares to cover shorts, and the few following days thereafter.

Hmmmm. OK, let's take a step back and look shorts again....

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/kolo2hw7ryf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=da005e3f065d05341a1fa196c07c9b3b3523793b)](https://preview.redd.it/kolo2hw7ryf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=da005e3f065d05341a1fa196c07c9b3b3523793b)

Figure 8: Percentage of Regular Hour Short Volume as a Percentage of Total Volume during Regular Hours.

Figure 8 just shows that over half of all volume, just during regular hours, are shorts. I don't know if there are numbers out there that show after hours shorts, if so PLEASE COMMENT IT!!!!!!

And because I can't get after hours short volume, we have to make a wild guess as to this next step.

So multiply Figure 8 by Figure 6b and you get.....

[![r/wallstreetbets - How There is No Mathematical Way Shorts We're Covered for Jan 13th, 22nd, or 25th with GME's 69.75 Million Outstanding Shares](https://preview.redd.it/yscv7o1ssyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=86594c24fa071bee2a7b7b2e25f607241c13e9b3)](https://preview.redd.it/yscv7o1ssyf61.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=86594c24fa071bee2a7b7b2e25f607241c13e9b3)

Figure 9: Estimated the full daily short volume by multiplying the regular hours short ratio from Figure 8 by the whole daily volume reported by Yahoo Finance.

NOTE: Figure 9 is an estimate, but it's still a low-ball estimate.

ASSUMPTION --> Let's assume that after hours volume plays just like regular hours trading.

I STILL HIGHLY FUCKING DOUBT THAT AND WOULDNT BE SURPRISED IF AfterHoursVolume was higher than 75% of just shorts.

Still, let's roll with Figure 9. Looking at Jan 13th, we estimate the number of shorts executed was...over 76 MILLION!

And there are.... 69.75M shares outstanding... yep... ok... checks out!

TLDR: Go to Figure 9, NOTE THAT IT'S AN ESTIMATE(and a low one at that), and see how it's impossible that they covered their shorts (ON THOSE DAYS) see edit below.

Not financial advice, not advocating violence, not legal advice, just doing some math while my wife and her boyfriend watch The Crown.

Edit 1: Yes, title is a typo. "...Shorts WE ARE Covered..." smh

Edit 2: finra link seems to break for some with the https:// in the front, try it without and added direct links to text files. Also, no I did not include ways to cover shorts with options/bought/sold/traded/fails-to-deliver/NoExpirationShortsJustPayInterest/t+3/etc.... since I already threw a god-awful amount of text at you and literally pointed to exact dates and I don't have Bloomberg/L50Data...

Edit 3: Removed comment by request of user.

Edit4: And thanks to u/[jusmoua](https://www.reddit.com/user/jusmoua) for getting the post back up!

and Thank You Everyone For the Awards!
