EDIT: Since I didn't explain my reasoning of the risk, here it is from a comment below. The issue is that the risk for investment firms goes beyond immediate financial losses. Given the pin that normal people buying GME have Melvin/Citron etc. in and the flurry of conversation about both the delegitimisation of markets and potential regulation of them, there’s a nonzero chance that one or more of the firms sitting on positions which could massively reduce the shorts decide to sell, both being $200-300 up AND serving to possibly protect the financial industry. As soon as regulation is mentioned or the legitimacy of the industry is questioned you can’t assume anything about how these people will behave, other than they will mobilise to avoid it and that brings risk for a lot of working class people right now. In this outcome they’d also get a tidy narrative about how the peasants should keep out of their business, which will only serve to isolate capital from working people even more.
This is according to people apparently able to access Level 2 ARCA order flow data for the NYSE, take with as big a pinch of salt as you want. It boils down to this: While reddit kickstarted the drive it was big players putting in massive orders, way above what redditors would be able to access or afford, which actually caused the squeeze.
Now my advice from my modest knowledge on markets, again, take with as much salt as you want: Big players will have been all over this before it even hit national news, and it's been international news for a couple of days now. All the talk of Melvin/Citron not being able to close their short positions because there aren't the shares available to buy, and as long as redditors hold then they'll force them to hemorrhage money, is all well and good if reddit holds all the available shares. But they don't. And now fuck knows how many investment firms have their hands in this, and they do not give one shit about coordinating with reddit. As soon as a firm who bought at $50-150, or the original firms like Blackrock who've had them since $10, decide to dump their entire order for $350 the scramble will begin.
Who the fuck do you think will make the money from this? Rooms of traders sat at terminals, possibly with software running to immediately sell once it drops below a threshold, possibly watching the line all day with a finger over the button, possibly coordinating with other firms and giving them the heads up that they'll be dumping at a certain time, or will it be the average person possibly conned into putting their life savings into the hype, possibly refinancing their possessions, with full-time jobs who might only manage to check the index once every hour or so, or possibly even needing to rely on reddit posts to tell them to sell?
Interest free loans are virtually guaranteed for the investment firms that get stung. It will be the working class who suffer. It was a fun meme while it was just a meme, but the house always wins. Now it's just depressing capitalism again. Sorry to shit on your dinner table.
Yeah, this was always going to be a game of chicken. The longer everyone holds on, the higher it goes. But eventually it's going to fall apart, and when it does it's the ones who get out first who will do best