I hate TLDR's.

To my core, I legitimately can't stand them.

In my opinion when it comes to nearly everything in this incredibly complex life, understanding anything always comes down to the details and when I'm asked to give a simpler breakdown after simpler breakdown, to me that just means I'm not fully conveying shit and I'm leaving out crucial information.

But I know many of you are short on time and you've wasted so much time reading so much bullshit that it's reasonable you need the highlights.

So I'm going to write the simplest TLDR I have ever written with as little words as possible and I'll include details below so you can get those if you're interested.

Also feel free to copy and paste this into whatever AI you are using and see if it can break it down even further.

And for this follow up post for this theory I am fully inviting all of you to throw a horde of questions, doubts, criticism, and whatever else you fancy and I will respond to it throughout the weekend up until Sunday.

Okay, fuck. Here goes.

SUPER SIMPLE TLDR

1. OP watches Option Chain for GameStop more than watches wife.

2. OP also records option chain and fills up storage with videos/screenshots.

3. Theory is even without volume (buying or selling) that just activity or movement or presence or the lack of all those things in GameStop options is a strong factor in what we see as the "stock price".

4. OP thinks everyone is brain washed to avoid even looking at the option chain let alone learning or talking about it.

5. And finally, OP believes that GME1 (the original contracts that now have warrants attached to them from the dividend issued by GameStop) are very valuable/special/locked from a form of dilution and the activity in that chain will upset control of the "stock price" when the players so choose.

Because power has been returned to the players.

END OF SUPER SIMPLE TLDR

- If you need it simpler than that, then use an AI (carefully as always) because even that TLDR feels like its way too short and I can't in good conscience break it down any simpler.

I respect you and I get it.

It just feels too much like I'm saying Aliens are real without any of the details anyone would require to even begin to consider the possibility.

This theory is insane and there are so many factors to it that make me question my own sanity on a daily basis. So the only thing that gives me even the slightest chance of making any sense even to myself lives in the details.

I hope you get that. Sorry if you don't.

THE DETAILS FOR THE DOOMED WORLDS THEORY

OP watches Option Chain for GameStop more than watches wife & 2. OP also records option chain and fills up storage with videos/screenshots - I may or may not have a wife but I have been watching the option chain for GameStop since 2021. You could say I'm a little obsessed. As a result of the fact that I was watching it like it owed me money I noticed some shit that I thought was strange.

It all came down to the bid sizes and ask sizes. The amount of contracts that according to the option chain where, on the table so to speak, as either buy orders or sell orders. I saw the amount of orders for the bids and the asks move in ways that looked like they followed a pattern. Even if I was only bidding to buy 1 contract or selling 1 contract, the sizes moved in the hundreds and thousands.

But it wasn't just that these other buy orders were always following and moving around in a pattern but it was honestly more strange that they seemed to follow rules. The orders followed even my bid increased by $1 or $2 so I'd instantly see thousands of other orders while I was only trying to buy 1 contract, but then if I increased my bid $15 then the other buy orders wouldn't follow. However, they did follow to same exact bid if I went back to my original bid and increased it by $1 over and over, replacing my order until I got to the same bid I was at when I increased it by $15. They buy orders would follow even if I was up $20 or $30 from that same place that wouldn't follow my increase of $15 unless I bid up slowly by $1 or $2 at a time.

I learned this was called automated quote joining or repricing that was taking place in an "illiquid options book". Apparently market makers are expected to maintain continuous two-sided quotes in many series while simultaneously taking measures to ensure their automation isn't compromising their edge. This is somehow green lit and sort of chalked up to ugly pricing if there are wide spreads where this kind of movement is taking place. According FINRA, the concern comes only when there is clear deception in rule 5210 regarding things like fictitious quoting, layering and spoofing.

It's not looking like actual manipulation unless the orders are clearly being used to create a false impression of supply and demand, even if all this behavior is screwing up price discovery making it extremely difficult to ascertain what the best price is for these contracts at the time this is happening.

On top of that, it's also affecting the greeks and not just the value of the contracts but future value of these contracts (how sensitive they will be to movement in the stock price and how suddenly they will decrease in value over certain periods of time). But even with that impact, regulators are looking for very specific kinds of behavior.

In my humble opinion after reviewing my screen recordings and photos, I believe that for years it's looked like manipulation. If you've traded in GameStop options as I have you've seen it.

Anytime the spread between the bid and the asks got closer across all the expiration dates, I saw a pattern where if that happened consistently and the spreads got closer, even if there wasn't an increase in volume, the value of the stock increased fairly consistently. When there were massive wide spreads the value of the stock dropped. Yes, I realize you can make the chicken and the egg argument here, and I'm not saying there was a perfect correlation. I'm just stating observations that I made.

I noticed that when the spreads tightened often enough new strikes were added suddenly to many expiration dates. Strikes like $24.50 in between the strike of $24 and $25 and this would follow all the way up to sometimes the highest OTM strike even if there wasn't much volatility at the time or any reason I could make sense of, for it to happen. However, this could be explained as well. The listing rules allow for this. They can do this to "maintain an orderly market" and to offer more "precise hedging and event timing".

Even though this behavior absolutely fragments the chain by spreading everything leaving strikes and expirations thinner, wider, less useful and therein less valuable. They split volume, attention, quoting interest and make the book look worse which has been acknowledged by exchanges like the Cboe and NYSE. And their counter argument is that that it basically allows for more precision kind of even if by doing so, it fucks the contracts that were there before.

The listing rules allow for this to be done, except for in non-standard contracts. Kind of like the ones we have now for GameStop. Each broker has different names for them which I have my own theory for why this is the case, but to avoid getting sidetracked let's just say these are the options with warrants. You can call them GME1 or adjusted contracts or non-standard contracts or whatever you like, as long you understand that these options unlike the bullshit standard ones that came in to replace them, that can be fucked with at any time, these special contracts are tied to the one-time corporate action. These are legacy contracts free from fragmentation. The issue for when this happens is that they are usually no longer under the "normal" continuous quoting regime and brokers push for you to focus on the "normal" chain, many brokers don't even allow for self-directed trading so you have to call in and place each order with a broker, which for me brokers like E-Trade turned it into such a hassle that as a trader you're so discouraged from even buying the legacy options. You can sell them by yourself which I have my own theories about again but I digress, but basically placing buy orders with them is a bitch or at least it was for me.

Like I said in my original post for this theory, Fidelity and Schwab have been the brokers I have had the easiest time on, but Schwab wins for me as far as speed goes on their thinkorswim platform, and if you can't trade them on your own on Schwab simply call and ask to be placed on the list of traders that can trade the adjusted contracts on your own. It definitely exists so don't take no for an answer if you happen to ask Schwab to be placed on the list.

I'll wrap up this post regarding my speculation and theory here. Based on the response I'll either keep expanding on it even further in future posts or not. We'll see.

Either way, thank you for reading and thank you GameStop for everything you're doing. Please remember this is ultimately all just entertainment and theories and nonsense. Verify your information, conduct your own due diligence, trust nothing at face value, remain skeptical even of yourself, be safe and be kind. The world is unkind. But you don’t have to be.

That is all.