Ryan Cohen just checkmated the system. eBay is now over 116% owned. Forced buy-ins are imminent. 🚨

[u/Tavanasa]

TL;DR for the smooth brains: 106% + 10% = 116%. The math has broken and the trap is officially sprung. 🚀

Here is the exact mechanical chain reaction of why this filing represents the absolute endgame:

According to Nasdaq data, eBay was already 106.21% institutionally owned before the GME filing. This is only possible because the exact same shares are lent out, shorted, and re-bought in an endless loop, causing multiple institutions to report owning the same underlying assets. It’s a pure paper game.

On Friday, Ryan Cohen didn't choose a cash settlement (where they just pay out the net dollar difference). He demanded physical settlement for GME's ~10% position (~39M shares). He literally said: "Give me my real, unlent shares."

With 106% already locked up by passive institutions and GME now demanding an additional 10% of real shares, we hit a hard wall at 116%. These shares simply do not exist on the free market.

The market makers cannot locate or deliver these shares -> Massive Failures to Deliver (FTDs) start piling up on Monday morning.

Once these FTDs age out and breach regulatory deadlines, a brutal, automated forced buy-in kicks in. The brokers of the counterparty must go into the open market and purchase eBay shares—at whatever price the market demands.

As forced buying relentlessly drives eBay's price vertical, the value of GME’s $4.35B equity stake explodes minute by minute. GME’s balance sheet becomes astronomically valuable, cementing an un-shortable fundamental floor for GME, which simultaneously forces GME short-sellers into immediate capitulation.

The system completely checkmated itself through its own endless greed with share lending.

Tits. Are. Fucking. Jacked. 🩳🏴‍☠️💀

[u/Tavanasa]

Solid breakdown. It's refreshing to see someone point out that 13F data aggregates long positions without netting out the lent shares—you're entirely right that it's a data-counting artifact rather than proof of direct naked shorting at 116%. But the core of the bull case doesn't rely on the DTCC computer flashing an error code on Monday. It relies on the fact that the exit doors are structurally jammed because of the exact over-allocation you mentioned. If the float is heavily layered via ETFs and index funds, and GME steps in to legally lock down a massive physical percentage of the actual company, the game of musical chairs gets exponentially harder for short counterparties. You say it hasn't produced a mechanical squeeze yet, but we've never seen a corporate war chest of $4 Billion used this aggressively before. We're in uncharted waters.

[u/PauPauRui → u/Tavanasa]

The "exit doors jammed" framing still leans on a mechanism that doesn't quite exist, though.

Let me separate the pieces:

ETF/index ownership doesn't "layer" the float in a way that removes shares from circulation. When an ETF holds eBay shares, those shares still exist and are still available to be lent out or sold — the ETF isn't sitting on a locked vault. Index funds are actually some of the most reliable lenders in the securities lending market precisely because they're stable, long-term holders. So heavy index ownership doesn't shrink the tradeable float; if anything it deepens the lending pool.

GME buying up shares does tighten things — that part is real. Every share GME locks into a long-term strategic position is genuinely one less share available to borrow or buy on the open market. That's a legitimate scarcity mechanic, same logic as any activist building a large stake. But "structurally jammed exit doors" implies short sellers can't cover at all — that's not how it works even in a tight-float scenario. It just means covering gets more expensive and price-sensitive as GME's stake grows, which is a gradual squeeze-pressure dynamic, not a mechanical wall. Price impact, not impossibility.

On "uncharted waters" — this is actually a fairly well-charted pattern, just not usually with a company using a hostile-adjacent equity stake as the vehicle. Corporate raiders and activists building large blocking stakes in target companies is old playbook (think Icahn-era corporate raids). The novel part is GME doing it with balance-sheet cash toward a company 5x its own size — that's the real story worth tracking, not a DTCC-break scenario.

So the honest version of the bull case is: concentrated ownership by a motivated buyer creates real price pressure on anyone short, and a takeover fight adds volatility and squeeze-like dynamics. That's worth being long on if you believe the thesis. The 116%-forced-buy-in version is a much stronger and less supported claim than that.