Let's talk about stock market manipulation. Moon gang today is wednesday march 30th, but i want to dive into what happened yesterday on tuesday when amc and jamie were both halted. Do i think something? Funky went on 100, but it's not exactly what you're most likely thinking. It's not the halt itself.

The craziness is what happened right at the start of the halt, so we'll be diving into that. We're also going to be diving into the price action for both amc and gme today and all the short interest numbers related to that. Neither of these equities have the best day, but we will be talking about some equities that had a stellar date, i'm talking about mullen, ticker, symbol, muln and forge global holdings, ticker, symbol, frge, and at the end of all that i want to talk about one interesting Trade that i'm thinking about for the overall market so with all that being said, let's hop right into it, so we're going to be examining the stock trading halt from yesterday through the lens of gme. But just so you know, you could also generically apply it to amc and also a special shout out to mr dave lauer, who did this deep dive in the blog post, which will be in the description of this video.

You could also find it on my twitter. I recently retweeted it, but this is a lot of amazing information and on top of that, i'll also put a resource about trading halts and the math behind them in a general sense. But just you know this one is going to be particularly through the lens of gme, the conflict of interest feedback loop, which is a new term that was coined by mr lauer. So there's a lot of information in here and i went through it in a bit more detail in today's live stream.

So if you want to just find the full breakdown go there, but what you need to know is it all comes down to. I would argue another term that was coined by mr lauer inducements and incentives here is the tldr version of this full write-up conflicts of interest, create inducements and incentives that cause corrupt order, routing practices and under investment in technology, both by brokers and exchanges, creating a 35 Millisecond window like pretty much the blink of an eye during the trading halt yesterday that exposed the conflicts of interest feedback loop, the alerts for options being in the money were a result of that, but did not reflect real prices. Okay, what the hell does that mean? I think i can make this a little bit more palatable for you. For me, i've read this many many times.

Here's what went down so basically g and me at one point in early in the morning, was at 199.41 and then a little bit after that it was at 182.79. That is a 16.6 drop, also known as an 8.3 percent drop in about three minutes. This means that, according to the nbbo, the national best bid and offer, in this scenario we're talking about the bid, the bid came below the volatility line and when i'm talking about this is and i'll make sure that this resource is posted as well. The limit up limit down what you need to picture is, basically, they are taking in mean of the current price and five percent above five percent below.

If you go above or below that line, which is dynamic throughout the day with the midline, obviously being in the middle, that's the arithmetic mean if you go five percent up five percent down within five minutes from the current calculation, that's going to trigger a halt, it Happens both to the upside happens also to the downside. I want to make that very, very clear. So obviously, here we dropped eight point three percent within three minutes that was a natural trigger. That was the whole.

The hall itself is not a manipulative thing. It's the craziness that happened within that first 35 seconds after the halt. That probably deserves a second look. What you need to know is the sip is a public data feed and, broadly speaking, the official record of public quotes and trades.

Everyone pays a lot to get that, but they don't want it to be too good, because it would naturally be self-cannibalizing, because all these exchanges also want to sell their own private data feeds to make even more money, which is fully outlined and detailed in this write-up. Then we have to talk about some of these particular exchanges and the one that is the star of this particular show is x, edg x. So when we talk about payment for order flow, you're, most likely thinking about brokers, sending the order flow to market makers and market makers are sending money payment for order flow well, similar to payment for order flow same thing, but maybe a little bit of a different Flavor we have rebates. This is when exchanges are doing it so think about your trading on your brokerage and you have a limit, buy order, a limit, sell order.

Well those orders. If the brokerage wants could be placed on a particular exchange such as edgex and then they pay them a rebate to do it. So basically, this payment is called a rebate and then, when you do it with a market maker, it's called payment for order flow. But, like i said pretty much a different flavor of the same thing with some nuances here and there.

Well here's what happened. Jamie got halted. It was a limit downhaul. Remember it dropped 8.3 in three minutes, so that was within the five minute window and it had an extreme nature to that, like really the percentage swing.

So that's what triggered it, but then this is where things went awry from the moment that it was supposed to stop trading. It's the next 35 milliseconds, where things get a little bit funky and here's what went down they should not have been trading. No one should have been trading when there's a whole, no insurance, it's everyone. It's market makers.

It's high frequency traders, it's retail, it's institutions, no one, should be trading in a trading hall. Well, this system was a little bit slow to respond, particularly with potential up to that 35 millisecond window. Well, even though no trading was happening, remember you're trading at a certain price and then the reason i was talking before about edgex, which was getting sold. The limit buys which would be lower and lower below the current price, and then the limit sales will be above well.

They started to clear those out you're trading at a price they're, getting rid of the limit sales they're. Getting rid of the limit buys because no one should be trading, nothing should be happening well. The system did it in a little bit of a weird way and i'm referring to edgex here where they were getting out of all those limit buys or getting out of the limit cells, and, as you can see, the bid ask is spreading as they're clearing these Order by order in order well, some of these brokerages robinhood have a really weird way of computing it and a lot of the times they're going to be using midpoint. So basically they take the bid.

They take the s they cut it in half and they're. Like that's, where we're at well, all of a sudden when you are cutting out all of the limit buys eventually you're gon na get to zero. At that point, we're trading at 182, so you're going to get all the way to zero and you're going to clear those out, but the limit cells. You can tell that there was a lot of, i guess: redditers memesters apes, who had really hilarious, sell orders in because at a moment in time it was the lowest ask, as they were clearing out all the other ones below it.

For 20 69, you had 1400 2069, 69, 420, 69 cents. You can tell that these were obviously people who put in comical, sell orders and, as at for a brief moment in time like a millisecond, it legitimately was the lowest ask, as edgex was trying to clear all these out, because the stock stopped trading. But within this 35 second window, these, like really the bid and ask that data these kind of quotes - were being still sent to certain brokerages. Now that is a mess up, obviously the sip being a little bit slow here.

There are two general possibilities: either edge, execute up the release of these quotes on the other side or the sip took 35 second milliseconds to publish approximately 112 quote updates, so there could be two errors here, but i would actually go on and say there was another Area of the fact that these brokerages they were taking a stupid midpoint in the world of coding. This is referred to as an edge case most of the time. They would not have to worry about this. You could easily do bid, ask cut it in half and that's what you're dealing with.

But in this scenario, when you're, using the bid and the ask of zero and a number that's getting higher and higher and higher as you're clearing out these orders. Because no one should be trading the stock. Well, that's silly! That's just it's an edge case that they didn't code for so this is showing and highlighting and really putting on center stage here various mess. Ups, you have these retail brokers, such as robinhood that have piss poor code and did not properly account for edge cases and then, on top of it.

When we're talking about these exchanges, such as edgex and sip. Well, there's a lot of conflicts of interest and you're. Seeing it play out here, they don't want the system to be as strong as they possibly can in terms of sip, because they are still trying to sell private data feeds. So all this was brought to light by the fact of this halt the halt itself, not really manipulative.

You can see all the numbers here of how is it computed? This isn't something that a human decided. This is, it's literally called a circuit breaker, it's something! That's coded into the entire market, and as soon as you violate the rules which are like you could easily compute these all yourself. The insanity of it is that it brought light to some of this other crazy stuff. That's going on and as lauer would say, it really all comes back to inducements and incentives, and this time around it was the rebates from really exchanges trying to get these limit orders from retail orders to be posted on theirs, and then it led to this with The 35 millisecond window and obviously that's why people were erroneously notified that they're out of the money calls were in the money when they were actually never in the money, because the stock had stopped trading.

None of these prices were legitimate trades. It was just like the piss-poor system of clearing out the limit buys and the limit sells is probably the best way. We can really sum it up, but i mean the one that i thought was interesting right here. Exchanges are being subsidized by sip money.

Remember that's! The quotes and all the other information which people are paying a lot to get on, but are failing to maintain the systems resulting in a 35 millisecond of bad quotes being published. They should have never been published because they were incentivized to keep up their own private feeds, valuable in order to maximize revenue and shareholder value, instead of maintaining fair and efficient markets. So that's the quick rundown. If you want more of a full rundown, i'm telling you just watch the stream from today, but it's very very interesting.

What even went down here once again i'll post this in the description same thing, with the limit up limit down of how all this is calculated and you can feel a little bit more comfortable about what upside or downside movement needs to occur, to prompt a halt. Speaking of shitty brokerages, this is another thing that was happening yesterday and i believe this is a brokerage that is popular in europe. Revolut hi we've seen some chatter about stock availability on our app. The info previously shared via in-app chat to some of our customers was outdated.

Neither we nor our broker currently have any restrictions to trade, amc or gme stocks. Sorry for any inconvenience. You know. Stop me if you've heard this before, but i'm getting really tired of these brokerages just saying: oh, it was a mess up thanks for pointing it out.

Like sorry hope, it didn't do anything bad to you, so i'm just giving you the update of revolut here. I've personally never used them. I believe it's most popular in europe, but i just wanted to give you the rundown, because it's something that is intertwined with what we saw play out in both gme and amc. Yesterday, speaking of amc and gme, amc, not the best day dropped almost 13 12.7 and then jimmy got pretty beat up too dropping seven percent and then even bed bath and beyond dropped.

16. Now i want to remind everyone to stay calm, cool and collected. Did it drop yeah, i mean that's a brutal drop but also remember where we are in the past two weeks, we're still up 91 uh when in doubt zoom out in terms of jimmy yeah. That was a brutal hit.

But in the past two weeks we're up a hundred and thirteen percent in the past couple update videos in reference to amc and jamie, i was articulating to the best of my ability that these types of movements are unsustainable. At a certain point, you need consolidation and, if anything, this to me, fingers crossed we're just starting the creation of a bull flag. I'm looking for lower highs, higher lows, kind of that triangle, flag, structure and then a breakout from that consolidation is very natural and i would argue necessary if you want this amc or gme, to go sky high. These types of green movements, it's not sustainable.

If anything, a little bit of a decline in price, i do wish it was less. Obviously i wish it was just kind of coasting at zero, but this is what we got hit with today, but this is what the market is. I mean we had such a huge run. It was very, i guess, almost predictable, that we had to have some sort of pullback, because the rocket engines were simply too hot.

Now i do want to point out one thing, so it is wednesday, the 30th and if you recall one two days ago, on gme, we had a crazy day it gained 25 and on amc one. Two days ago, we had a crazy day. It gained 45. What's super interesting about, this is right here on amc.

Yes, the short interest is now up to 21 in increase today, but remember we're on a two day settlement system, so the shorts that could have covered two days ago. This is the earliest day for them to return their shares, not many returned, 3.6 million returned 6 million borrowed and the shares on loan is still 137 mil with a 108 expected to actually be short. So this was a thought of mine. I was like.

I don't know like maybe some shorts covered, but i thought it was a little bit more of like in the options market a little bit more of fomo buying and it turns out that's exactly what the data is suggesting to us. Not many shares were returned today, and this is important because we're on the two-day settlement so now we're two days removed from that crazy 45 jump on amc, but utilization's still a hundred and in terms of jimi you're going to see the same thing. Yes, there was a net return. Today there was a return of 2.24 million with a bar of 1.27, but overall 2.24 million returned with the net change of a return of a million and the shares on loan still at 22.2 million.

The shortage was still 23 overall. Did some cover? Yes, was it any meaningful amount? The data is suggesting no there's still many many shorts betting against both of these stocks. Utilization still 100 on gme in terms of amc and gme on amc, i'm looking for support between 23 50 and 24. That's the support region i'll be watching tomorrow and in terms of jimmy i'll, be watching 160, followed by roughly 151, so 160 and 150.

That's what we'll call it but remember the rsi in both of these it's so incredibly overextended a break is natural. I cannot stress that enough now, in terms of a bit of positive development, mulan had a crazy. Second half of the day ended up gaining 29. The ceo of the company, ticker symbol, muln, mullen automotive, ended up doing an interview with benzinga, and this was a very interesting quote - we're fairly confident that we identified enough partners to ensure that we're not going to have any delays in the builds of our products.

In reference to chip shortages, so this is basically those processing chips and overall, we're just generically hearing a lot of shortages. So the fact that he was able to clarify that we're. Actually, it seems as if he's saying the company will not be seeing that that obviously was met with a very, very bullish reaction, and now muellen is trading back at three dollars and once again, probably putting some pressure on the shorts. This is one that we've been discussing because it had wonky data when it had more short exempt trades than there was even float.

Now. Let's talk about frge another one that went crazy today ended the day, almost up 74. I wanted to give you the quick rundown on this, so this is dated september 13th, 2021 forge global to go public and two billion dollar merger with motive capital. Forge's mission is to create an accessible liquid and transparent private market forge operates a leading global private securities marketplace with technology that is, transforming the global private market ecosystem for investors, private companies, shareholders and employees.

The best way i could describe what they do is there's a lot of companies where people have equity, that's not on the public market. Well, this is a private market where that type of stuff can be traded. Obviously it's a lot more nuanced than that, but i just want to give you kind of the lowdown on the company. Anyway, obviously they were setting up for a spec deal last week it went live and obviously today it had some crazy action.

Forged global shares soared 90 up 306 since market debut last week. Now, if you look at the chart, there was really no like fundamental catalyst that got this going. If anything, it was grinding, upward, got smacked and then started grinding again and then out of nowhere it exploded. I think some shorts got burned now.

If you look at ortex since it started trading like it just started trading. The short interest is a bit wonky, but here's what we need to talk about the cost to borrow sky high 301 percent utilization 99.5. This is telling me that a lot of people try to short it and there's still high demand to continue to short it. But what's nuts about it is the shares on loan if the utilization is 99.5 and the shares on loan is 101? That tells me it's an extremely low float stock and remember the lower float.

A stock is the more crazy it can actually move, and this one has a float of 700 000 shares to kind of compare that gme is around 75 million, and then amc is around 513 million. This one's 700 000 absurdly low float so really any meaningful amount of shorts could cause a huge movement and as soon as this thing started to get going, they probably got squeezed uh. I don't know if it was all of them a portion of them. I don't know what it was, but this was a low float banger that ended up gaining 74 in one day, absolutely crazy and now, finally, to wrap this all up.

One thing that i wanted to remind you of is like one particular trade that i'll be watching, and this is a basic gap-filled trade. The spy has moved a lot. The overall market in the past two weeks is up ten percent. That's a lot for the overall market.

I am looking at this gap-filled play from the high on march 28th, which is a high of 455.91. I think that's a layup of a play, i'm personally executing this trade through the futures market, but you could do it. However, you want, if you want uv xy calls. If you want spy puts, you could do it.

However, you want i'm just looking at this directional movement down to the gap fill of the high from march 28th, just because i really like the statistical odds of playing gap, fills on the overall market. That's what i have for you today. I would love your thoughts in a comment below if you enjoyed this video. It would be awesome if you could help me out with the algorithm by destroying that, like button and if you haven't already join up with the fun join up with the channel by joining up with the moon gang hit that subscribe button.

I appreciate your time. I appreciate the fact that you even spent a second of your day on this video and i hope to have you in the next one. I hope you have an absolutely be a beautiful day. Peace out, you.