NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[jimmy667]

Any short sale of a stock priced less than $2.50 is by definition high margin because one must hold cash or marginal securities of $2.50 per share shorted. OTC stocks and therefore NWBO have no marginal value so penny stocks are suicide to short unless one is exempt from margin requirements by having an account with a value of over $25 million in the account holding the shares short. Some of these short hedge funds got decimated shorting last year in the Reddit meme stock frenzy because due to lack of reporting requirements these funds had no idea how crowded the short trades in particular stocks had become. The redditors figured out how crowded the shorts were in a lot of these retail companies hurt by the pandemic lockdowns thatthe vulture hedge funds were targeting for greed and stuck back buy buying and holding shares then the Bigger types of hedge funds put the hurt on the short funds buy buying long call options that forced Options Market Makers to buy long common stock to hedge against against the long calls they sold to fill the orders of those buying the calls. That is the normal operations of the market in Options contracts. One has to understand when options are bought and sold the market maker in the options take the other side of the trade in 99.9% of all buys and sells of options and stay "con
vered" by balancing their books with common stock. Buy a call sell 100 common short. Sell a call buy 100 common long. Gamma squeezes happen when meme stocks have a lot of common being bought up and call bought at same time so market makers filling long call orders must buy common as well then those that were holding shares short now are forced to buy common tocover at ever higher prices and the cycle accelerates.
In effect this is a turbo charged inversion of what the Jeffery Epstein type short sellers have done for years shorting stocks and buying put options so options market makers have to short sell common as well to balance the put options they sold to the short seller hedge funds. The Market Makers in the Options market have to stay balanced with positions in common to offset the net options position one long one short. Same as the careful investor that sells cover calls or holds 100% of the cash to buy the stock on puts sold or calls bought. Short sellers have short stock and puts bought (short). True hedges are same as market maker or careful investor long options and short stock. Meme or extreme longs are long options and long the common stock therefore just like the reckless shorts force further common short sales by options MMs they force the options market makers to buy common along with them.
Sorry I went off on a tangent as the process that happened in the market in meme stocks is happening again.
NWBO does not have this problem but did before when NWBO was targeted by this type of abusive short selling when it traded on NASDAQ and might be one of reasons LP voluntarily switched to OTC where NO STOCKS have options.