[JSH]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

I'm a big fan of stocks, of owning shares in a company or in a mutual fund. I'm fine with speculation too.

But the last paragraph of this article has a very important bit of information:


So for every GameStop share out there, 2.6 shares were sold short. What kind of a system, what kind of government-regulated system, lets there be 2.6 shares sold short for every one share that actually exists? There's something fundamentally wrong there, especially when people are loudly asking if what the individuals on Reddit are doing is illegal market manipulation.

The Redditors bought real shares of stock that actually existed, they didn't "borrow" and sell 2.6 times more shares than there really are. If there was ever an illegal manipulation of the market, I think selling more shares than exist in order to drive down their price should be first on the list.

Some bought real shares and some bought options. Options work both ways - long or short. Robinhood allows individuals to buy options either with cash or on margin.

https://learn.robinhood.com/articles...-is-an-option/