Thread regarding Sears layoffs

Yea I had the same thought about the short squeeze. Nice way to crush those levereging on margin. As for the stock price being irrelevent I think the point is the ship is going down and the stock seems basically worthless unless you want to get involved with a mountain of debt. The settlement the other day and the words from the exec that basicallu said the shareholders had an oppurtunity to buy Seritage so it was ok to strip the assets from Sears pretty much sums it up for me. 40 million dollar penalty on about 4 billion in assets gone, seems fair I guess.

Thank you. That was actually very interesting. And informative. Stock machinations aren't my cup of tea but I can see where it could become addictive.

No, you don't understand ran. I will try to help. You borrowed a $7 marble from your neighbor for a nominal fee with a promise to replace the borrowed marble at a later date and then you sold that marble immediately for market price. Now you are "short" because you have to replace the marble that you sold per your obligation. You want the price of marbles to go down because that is your profit minus the fees and capital gains taxes if you cash out of market.

Your bought rent on a marble and sold that rent contract for $7 and when you had to buy back for $5, you put $2 in your pocket and cancelled your obligation.

But what happens if it works the other way? What happens if you buy at $7 and sell the marble but then marble price goes above $7? Now you are you are losing money and you need to cover your obligation and that forces you to buy AND BUY FAST. That is called a cover buy and it drives up the price of a stock regardless of underlying value. Look at the volume on SHLD today. That was like 20x. Good traders see that sort of thing and they will front run it which is what happened today.

That trade was overloaded short. SHLD is still doomed. It is just that good traders took advantage of it and I am sure Eddie and Bruce through their various capital management operations. 30% is a massive market move for any stock.

My advice to anyone is look at the open interest option. SHLD was loaded short 70%. The Crock Market is a game much like a casino.

Is anyone really telling me that FaceBook has any actual underlying value? Twitter is worse. Uber is completely worthless. They will need attorneys. Uber is great short option.

a stock that is headed to zero will often double of triple in price on the way down- when this gets to $3 we will see announcements from Eddie that take it to $6 before resuming the fall- nothing has changed but as people have noted with so many short positions it does not take much to create a temporary squeeze. Note though the sp fell back quite a bit from day's highs and the amount of put buying was huge. Nothing changes Sears won't be around in 2 years.

I am short this stock through long dated puts but I did have some short dated calls on it this week as it had fallen quickly and was due some sort of bounce. Happened with them all - RadioShack, circuit city, Lehman, sports authority - Sears is flooring a well trodden path to the inevitable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_squeeze

I don't understand day trading but I do understand that a company with a high stock price is more likely doing better overall than company with a low price. Especially when that price is around $5.

The way I see it is that investors believe a company is going to do well or not and the stock price reflects that.