Tag Archives: AMC

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Don’t Wanna Pay 216%? How About a Naked Short?

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Cost to borrow shares of AMC Entertainment holdings went through the roof today. From a report out just this afternoon on InvestorPlace:

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The cost to borrow (CTB) fee for AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) has skyrocketed to 215.80% today, up by more than 100% from the reading of 101.76% on March 10. Yesterday’s closing CTB fee reading clocked in at 211.41%. Meanwhile, between March 10 and today, AMC stock has fallen more than 10%. What’s going on?

The CTB represents the yearly fee that short sellers must pay to borrow shares. A higher fee could represent increased short seller demand while a lower fee could represent lower demand. A higher fee could also signal a scarcity of available short shares. Still, AMC’s exorbitant CTB fee could actually be seen as a positive for AMC stock shareholders.

Let’s say you want to short AMC. But you don’t want to pay 216% a year interest because…uh…no one does.

But don’t worry! There’s a dandy alternative.

How about a naked short?

With a naked short, you don’t even have to borrow the shares at all! Instead of 216% interest, how about 0%!

Pretty sweet, right?

One small problem. It’s against the law.

There is strong evidence of massive naked shorting in AMC stock. Fails to deliver hit nearly 12 million shares in the latest SEC report.

That’s absolutely staggering, even for AMC. And keep in mind, most stocks have few if any fails to deliver.

Why are tons of trades failing?

To close a short sale, you need to borrow some shares. But it’s kinda hard to do that right now, at 216% interest.

So why not just cut some corners and naked short? It’ll just wind up a fail to deliver and get swept under the rug.

There’s likely a crime here in plain sight. But for it to matter, the SEC needs to act.

But before shorts laugh at the SEC and pop a bottle of Dom, they should think about the risks.

Half of Wall Street is betting that AMC will crash if APE shares convert. This share conversion dilutes AMC stock holders.

But conversion isn’t certain. And even if it happens, AMC shares have jumped after prior dilutions.

In a way, that makes sense.

Yes, you own a smaller piece of the company after dilution. But this heavily indebted company now has far more capital.

That makes the risk of bankruptcy increasingly remote.

I have no idea where AMC or any other stock is going.

But I do know that people don’t like paying 216% interest. And to avoid it, they just might break the law.

After all, what could happen?

Do you think the SEC will act? Leave a comment and let us know!

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More on markets:

AMC Shorts Lose $180 Million So Far This Year

Interest Rate Time Bomb May Kill Hedge Funds

Executives Dumped Shares Shortly Before First Republic Rescue

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AMC Shorts Lose $180 Million So Far This Year

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This is not investment advice.

Like moths to a flame, short sellers love to bet against AMC Entertainment Holdings. Those bets have cost them a cool $180 million so far this year.

And it’s only March.

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From a new report in TheStreet:

This year alone, thanks to quick rallies in the stock, AMC short sellers have already lost about $180 million.

One of the main reasons why there has been such high demand for short positions in AMC in recent months is the fact that many investors have entered into an arbitrage trade. They’ve shorted AMC and gone long APE due to the share price discrepancy.

Short sellers need to borrow AMC shares. The borrow fees have soared to 160% currently, a staggering rate.

AMC and APE are an obvious pairs trade. The two may converge if APE shares convert into AMC shares, as expected.

So if you short AMC and buy APE, you should make money on both trades. The AMC shares decline due to dilution, while the APE shares rise in value to match the AMC shares.

Sounds great right? Small problem…

AMC has a passionate fan base of retail investors. Those investors are attempting to orchestrate a short squeeze.

And that’s a whole lot easier to do when 25% of the shares are sold short and it costs 160% a year to do it.

The pain has no end in sight.

Retail investors are buying stocks like crazy. They bought at a pace of $1.5 billion a day in the first two months of the year, a record.

Hedge funds shorting AMC, pairs trade or no, are making a big mistake.

Every day, more cash is coming in to squeeze them. And you can’t hold a position forever at 160% interest.

Worst of all, their potential for loss is unlimited.

Any responsible investor would close this trade immediately. But never forget, they’re playing with other people’s money.

What do you think the future holds for AMC and APE shares?

Leave a comment and let me know!

More on markets:

Interest Rate Time Bomb May Kill Hedge Funds

Executives Dumped Shares Shortly Before First Republic Rescue

SVB Fallout

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Shorts Are Covering Even Faster than Jan ’21

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Short sellers are running for the exits as markets rally. Short covering has hit its highest level in over 7 years, according to a Financial Times report:

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Equity markets have risen sharply so far this year, led by many of the speculative stocks that were clobbered hardest during 2022’s global sell-off. Many of the funds that profited from the rout have found themselves poorly positioned for the rebound, which has recently accelerated as investors sensed that interest rates were close to peaking in many major economies.

The resulting flurry of short covering — when investors buy back stocks they had been betting against to limit their losses — was the largest since November 2015, according to a Goldman Sachs note to clients seen by the Financial Times.

Short sellers tend to pile into the same, heavily shorted stocks. When they rush to close their positions, this can cause a short squeeze.

A short squeeze happens when many short sellers all try to buy at once to close their positions. This can cause a stock’s price to skyrocket.

Short squeezes in stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings and GameStop in 2021 took down hedge funds including Melvin Capital. Today, those same stocks are some of the year’s best performers.

Despite big increases in heavily shorted stocks, short sellers still have massive exposure. AMC’s short interest has dipped only slightly, remaining at a lofty 29%.

This indicates such stocks could have a lot of room to run. Short sellers will have to buy many more shares to close out their positions.

Shorts are also facing some of the heaviest retail buying in history. Retail buying hit an all-time high of 23% of all stock buys, according to a recent Forbes report.

Retail investors are the biggest buyers of many heavily shorted stocks, including AMC and GameStop.

Over a month ago, I predicted a market rally in 2023. I guess the hedge funds missed that post. 🙂

If the Fed remains dovish, I expect many more losses for short sellers. 2023’s short squeezes could make 2021 look almost quaint.

What do you think the future holds for short sellers? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

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As Fed Rates Peak, Are Markets Ready to Take Off?

Major Hedge Fund Down 54% — Survival in Doubt

SEC Refuses to Address Massive Fraud in Markets

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Short Sellers Down $81 Billion in 2023

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Well, that was fast! With 2023 less than a month old, short sellers have already lost $81 billion.

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Many are running for the exits. From a new report from The Wall Street Journal:

Short sellers who have incurred hefty losses are actively trimming their positions, said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners. Investors betting against stocks have racked up $81 billion of mark-to-market losses on short positions this month through Thursday after accumulating $300 billion in gains in 2022, Mr. Dusaniwsky said.

Markets have rallied this year, with meme stocks leading the way. As short sellers race to close their positions, their losses are likely to grow:

Signs that inflation is cooling have stoked bets among investors that the Federal Reserve will pivot from raising interest rates to cutting them as soon as the second half of the year. That has helped risky assets across the board rise. Especially risky corners of the market, such as stocks with high short interest, have rallied even more. Analysts say that has likely forced short sellers to close out bearish positions to cut their losses—resulting in what is known on Wall Street as a short squeeze. 

Some of the most heavily shorted stocks have been among the best performers so far this year.

Meme stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings, GameStop, and Bed Bath & Beyond are all up over 20%. The broader S&P 500 is up 6% for the year so far.

In addition to huge market losses, short sellers are also paying stratospheric interest rates to borrow shares. Rates to borrow AMC shares have ranged between 20% and over 100% per year in recent weeks.

It’s no wonder that some short sellers may be resorting to illegal tactics. There is evidence of widespread naked short selling in some heavily shorted stocks.

Common and preferred shares of AMC have seen millions of fails to deliver. These failed trades often occur when a short seller sells stock without borrowing it.

This is called naked short selling and it’s illegal under federal law. It’s also a powerful way to push down a stock’s price without paying any interest.

The coming months could push many short sellers to the brink.

A race to close out positions may cause heavily shorted stocks to rally further. Meanwhile, a more dovish Fed could cause a general market rally, adding to their losses.

Short sellers should avoid meme stocks like the plague. A heavily shorted stock with a passionate fan base is simply too hot to handle.

What do you think is next for short sellers? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on markets:

Major Hedge Fund Down 54% — Survival in Doubt

Citadel’s Illegal Trades — The Tip of the Iceberg?

As Fed Rates Peak, Are Markets Ready to Take Off?

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New Report: AMC Fails to Deliver Hit 4.3 Million

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Fails to deliver in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings reached extraordinary levels in November. 4.3 million shares have failed to clear by November 14th, the latest data available.

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This new report, out today from the SEC, shows the highest levels of fails to deliver in months. This is particularly striking given the much lower fails to deliver in the largest stocks.

Let’s see how many fails to deliver some of the largest stocks in the market had on November 14th:

Amazon: 253

Apple: 0

Google: 0

Microsoft: 11,553

These companies are hundreds of times larger than AMC. But somehow, a little theater chain dwarfs them all in failed stock trades.

Fails to deliver can happen for benign reasons. But a long and persistent pattern of fails to deliver, as in AMC stock, can point to something more nefarious.

Huge numbers of failed trades can indicate naked short selling. This is the illegal practice of selling short shares you never borrowed.

It’s a potent way to crush a stock’s price. After all, if you don’t have to borrow a stock, you can sell short all you want!

Increasing failed trades may be related to higher borrowing costs for AMC shares. With fees going from 20% to up to 100% a year, borrowing shares is more expensive than ever.

It’s a lot cheaper to naked short sell. Unfortunately, it’s also against the law.

I urge the SEC to investigate the long term pattern of chaos in AMC shares. Only a full investigation can restore confidence in markets.

What do you think of this huge fails to deliver number? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

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Tiger Global Losing $185 Million a Day

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Latest Report: AMC Fails to Deliver Hit Over 2 Million

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Fails to deliver in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings have hit over 2 million shares, according to a new SEC report released this week.

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Failed trades peaked at 2,161,808 shares on September 28th. Fails to deliver remained elevated through the end of September, the last day covered in the report.

AMC’s new preferred shares, trading under the symbol APE, also saw large numbers of failed trades. They peaked on the same day, at 466,507 shares.

I find it suspicious that fails to deliver in both shares would peak at the exact same time. My hunch is that hedge funds launch coordinated attacks on both share classes at once.

One powerful weapon in their arsenal is naked short selling. This involves selling short shares you never borrowed.

Naked shorting is a powerful way to push down a stock’s price. If you never have to find shares to borrow or pay interest, you can short as many as you want!

Naked short sales often leave a trail of failed trades. You can’t settle a trade when the shares never existed.

Naked short selling is illegal in most circumstances. But why let that trouble you?

Another key piece of evidence is how out of line AMC’s fails to deliver are compared to much larger stocks. Here’s a snapshot from September 28th:

Alphabet (Google): 92

Amazon: 21,012

Apple: 11,083

Microsoft: 60,869

AMC: 2,161,808

APE: 466,507

These tech giants are hundreds of times the size of AMC. So why does AMC have dramatically more trades failing to clear?

Perhaps the tech giants are too big for hedge funds to attack.

Our markets rely on the confidence of investors. But it’s hard to maintain that confidence when stocks see huge numbers of failed trades and no one investigates.

What do you think of the chaotic market in AMC shares? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on markets:

New Report: Millions of Fails to Deliver in AMC and APE Shares

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Hedge Fund Manager’s Arrest Shows How Market Manipulation Works

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New Report: Millions of Fails to Deliver in AMC and APE Shares

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Fails to deliver in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings reached the millions in the first half of September. The chaos hit both AMC and AMC Preferred Equity (APE) shares, according to a new report out today from the SEC.

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APE fails to deliver peaked at 2.4 million shares on September 1st. AMC fails to deliver peaked a week later on September 8th, at 2.2 million shares.

AMC shares have had large and persistent fails to deliver for over a year. It’s telling that as soon as APE shares were issued, huge fails to deliver appeared there as well.

Meanwhile, much larger companies continue to have almost no trades failing. Let’s take a look at fails to deliver in a few major stocks on Sept 1st:

Amazon: 0

Apple: 5,679

Microsoft: 0

Tesla: 14,727

APE: 2,366,422

And again a week later:

Amazon: 17,603

Apple: 523,020

Microsoft: 179

Tesla: 10,561

AMC: 2,164,802

Fails to deliver in AMC and APE are dramatically larger than in much bigger companies. Why are these shares in constant chaos while other companies are unaffected?

I suspect it’s because of naked short selling by hedge funds. This illegal practice involves selling short shares you never borrowed.

It’s a powerful weapon to crush a stock. If you never have to find shares to borrow, you can sell short any amount!

This can reach absurd levels. In August, we saw fails to deliver in APE shares exceed the entire daily trading volume.

The SEC must investigate what’s going on in AMC and APE shares. Until they do, it’s hard to believe the prices we see are real.

What do you think of the huge number of failed trades in these shares? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! 👋

More on markets:

Over 43 Million APE Shares Fail to Deliver — Market in Chaos

Hedge Fund Manager’s Arrest Shows How Market Manipulation Works

Morgan Stanley Investigation Spreads to Multiple Countries

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Over 43 Million APE Shares Fail to Deliver — Market in Chaos

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The market in AMC Entertainment Holdings Preferred Equity (APE) shares is a mess. Fails to deliver (FTDs) peaked at over 43 million shares last month, according to a report just out from the SEC.

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These new shares were issued last month by AMC and began trading on August 22. FTDs peaked at 43,438,257 shares two days later.

This represents over 8% of all shares outstanding. And it all happened in 3 days!

FTDs like this is beyond a mix-up. It’s a total market meltdown.

FTDs remained elevated through the end of the August reporting period. They settled at 5,635,854 on August 31, the last data available.

Let’s compare the FTDs on August 24th in APE shares with those of some of the biggest stocks in the market:

Amazon: 0

Apple: 395,929

Google: 113

Microsoft: 0

Tesla: 530

APE: 43,438,257

APE shares have dramatically more FTD’s than other, much larger stocks.

FTDs can sometimes happen for benign reasons, like clerical errors. But when there’s a sustained pattern of massive trade failures, it often indicates naked short selling.

This generally illegal practice involves selling short shares without borrowing them first. It’s a powerful way to push down a stock’s price.

If you don’t have to find shares to borrow or pay interest, you can sell short as many shares as you like! All that selling makes a stock’s price crater.

If naked short sellers are targeting APE, so far they seem to be winning. The stock is down 43% since its debut.

The NYSE and SEC must look into this market breakdown immediately. One in three trades failing is not a functional market.

What do you think of the huge FTD numbers in APE shares? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

Have a great weekend everyone!

More on markets:

AMC Fails to Deliver Pass 700,000 in New Report

Hedge Fund Manager’s Arrest Shows How Market Manipulation Works

Morgan Stanley Investigation Spreads to Multiple Countries

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New Index Will Drive Demand for AMC, Other Meme Stocks

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Note: This is not financial advice.

Robinhood Markets is launching a new index fund to track meme stocks. From a report that broke this morning in The Wall Street Journal:

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Robinhood Markets is launching an index to track the favorite stocks of its millions of predominantly young, social-media-savvy customers.

The brokerage firm’s new “Robinhood Investor Index” will track the performance of the 100 investments most popular among its user base. Initially, the top five stocks in the index will be Tesla , Apple, Amazon.com, Ford Motor and meme-stock favorite AMC Entertainment Holdings. Robinhood said it would update the composition of the index monthly, offering a view into its customers’ changing tastes.

In an unusual approach to constructing an index, Robinhood said it would weight stocks in the index by the “conviction” customers have in them, defined as the percentage of assets in a customer’s portfolio devoted to a particular stock.

The new index will increase demand for meme stocks, especially those weighted heavily like AMC and Tesla.

When a stock is included in an index like the S&P 500 for the first time, the price generally jumps. This is because so many index funds track the S&P 500.

When a stock is added to it, those funds must buy the stock. Similarly, when investors buy shares of the new Robinhood index, Robinhood must buy stocks like Tesla, AMC, etc.

This increases demand for those stocks.

Indeed, a McKinsey study found that stocks added to the S&P 500 jumped a median of 5%. But the increase was short-lived, disappearing in just 20 days on average.

The effect of inclusion in the Robinhood index is likely to be more modest, given that $5.4 trillion tracks the S&P and the Robinhood index is just getting off the ground. Still, I expect a modest tailwind for meme stocks from this change.

The Robinhood index is an interesting approach. It allows investors to profit from the “wisdom of the crowd,” following investors who have strong conviction about particular stocks.

If an investor is confident enough to put their entire portfolio into a single stock, maybe they know something I don’t.

I’ll be curious to see how the Robinhood index does against other index funds. And you can bet every broker is rushing to create a meme index as we speak.

What do you think of Robinhood’s new meme stock index fund? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

Have a great weekend everybody! 👋

More on markets:

AMC Fails to Deliver Pass 700,000 in New Report

Morgan Stanley Investigation Spreads to Multiple Countries

Hedge Fund Manager’s Arrest Shows How Market Manipulation Works

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AMC Fails to Deliver Pass 700,000 in New Report

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Note: This is not financial advice.

Fails to deliver in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings hit massive levels this month.

Failed trades peaked at over 700,000 shares, according to a report out this morning from the SEC. They remained in six figure territory for all but two days in the period, which covers the first half of August.

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This many failed trades is highly unusual for most stocks. Let’s zoom in on August 8th and compare AMC with some of the largest stocks in the market:

Alphabet (Google):: 22

Amazon: 533,744

Apple: 379,843

Microsoft: 0

Tesla: 49,705

AMC: 723,636

Keep in mind, these other companies are dramatically larger. But month after month, little old AMC has far more failed trades.

Fails to deliver can happen for benign reasons, like administrative errors. But why would such errors affect this stock way more than others, time and time again?

The more likely explanation is naked short selling. This involves selling short shares you never actually borrowed.

It’s a powerful weapon to push down a stock’s price.

You don’t have to find any shares to borrow. And you don’t have to pay any interest to borrow them!

This means you can sell short an unlimited number of shares. Awesome, right?

It’s illegal for a hedge fund to do this. But that may not stop them, especially given lax enforcement.

But perhaps the most incredible thing is that 723,636 may understate the number of trades that are failing.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) puts failed trades that don’t resolve for a long period into an “obligation warehouse.” At that point, they essentially disappear.

Earlier this month, over 9 million shares worth of failed trades in AMC stock suddenly vanished.

Maybe the DTCC were busy beavers cleaning it all up. Or maybe they just swept them under the rug.

We won’t know until the DTCC and SEC offer transparency on what happens to failed trades.

Something tells me we’ll be waiting a while.

What do you think of the new SEC report? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on markets:

AMC’s 9 Million Missing Shares

Morgan Stanley Investigation Spreads to Multiple Countries

Is Melvin’s Gabe Plotkin Headed to Prison?

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This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

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Photo: Melvin Capital founder Gabriel Plotkin