The Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Pump and Dump Part IIRecently we watched in the news the resurrection of the "Meme Stocks" frenzy and the "Roaring Kitty" username. Those who witnessed the first surge in stocks like NYSE:AMC , NYSE:GME , NYSE:BB , etc., remember those were basically a "Make me Rich quick" kind of event, they were known as "Meme Stocks" because it all started as memes by a group of traders in internet forums who allegedly went against the Wall St. Hedge Funds who were heavily invested in shorting these stocks, by buying all at the same time and triggering a strong short squeeze.
Well, this event was the hope for this group of traders who saw the opportunity to pocket huge profits in a short time frame, and it gave them the sense of power against Wall St. That time these stocks were heavily shortened, and they were prone to an aggressive short squeeze, not only from these member of the meme stock traders, but by professional traders.
At the end of the day this group of stocks spiked, the people took profits, they left the market, some richer, some poorer, and others as bag holders. All these stocks faded along the time and some even went bankrupt. This event was imprinted in the memory of those hoping that this could happen again, but most amateur traders don't take the time to actually learn to trade, they ran with the rumor again after a fuzzy post by the "Roaring Kitty" and they just grabbed whatever was being mentioned in the forums. This time however it was very different. Their behavior was predictable and the professional traders already had a plan in advance, to short the spike. The small buying power of the meme stock traders plus their inexperience in swimming with professional sharks just turned them into an easy morning lunch. The rumor, action and shorting cycle was very fast. In the chart we can see outstanding profits in the order of hundreds of percentual points. But if we take a look at the short sale volume, we notice that the spike was immediately extinguished.
The #VolumeCandles feature of Trading View is an excellent tool to visually pinpoint the development of this pump and dump event. In the chart I added some more stocks which were rumored in the forums, NYSE:GME , NYSE:AMC , NASDAQ:KOSS , NYSE:OKLO , NASDAQ:FFIE , NASDAQ:GWAV , $CRKN. The symbols used to display the short volume were:
FINRA:GME_SHORT_VOLUME
FINRA:AMC_SHORT_VOLUME
FINRA:KOSS_SHORT_VOLUME
FINRA:OKLO_SHORT_VOLUME
FINRA:FFIE_SHORT_VOLUME
FINRA:GWAV_SHORT_VOLUME
FINRA:CRKN_SHORT_VOLUME
All of them have the same pattern,
Rumor in the meme stock forums
Frenzy buying
Immediate huge short volume
The takeaway of this presentation is, never fall for what others "rumor" in forums, trade following your own system, your money and your profit/loses are just yours, so the responsibility to plan your trade.
Buying and selling shares in the stock market is very easy, trading is not, and they're definitely not the same. #LearnToEarn.
