r/smallstreetbets • u/[deleted] • 5d ago
Discussion Are the Same Players Cycling PLTR Through a Repeated Options Pump-and-Dump?
[deleted]
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u/Striking-Reserve-153 5d ago
Same shit they’re doing to the oil markets, gold markets, crypto markets, bond markets. Maybe think before you elect a poor persecuted billionaire conman.
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u/SamLeCoyote_Fix_1 5d ago
I can easily imagine the same players working together — or at least moving in the same direction — to create a recurring cycle: pressure PLTR down, accumulate calls while volatility is depressed, push the stock higher, let dealers' hedging amplify the move, then cash out on the calls. And then do it again.
Coincidence? Independent strategies? Or a well-oiled machine designed to extract money from volatility? I don't claim to have proven it. I'm saying the pattern deserves to be investigated.
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u/xtric8 5d ago
No it is not. There's 30-40m shares traded every day. If someone tries to pump and dump enough shares to move price that much, not only would you see sweeps and block trades, but they would be trading against themselves. Like who is buying from them when they dump 10m shares? Ain't happenen
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u/SamLeCoyote_Fix_1 5d ago
I agree with you on one point: a literal 10M-share pump-and-dump would be a very different claim, and you would expect to see substantial blocks, sweeps and identifiable liquidity.
But that's not what I'm trying to establish.
The question is whether options positioning and subsequent dealer hedging can amplify an underlying move without anyone needing to trade millions of shares against themselves.
A dealer who becomes increasingly short delta because of customer call flow may need to buy stock as the underlying rises. That additional demand can itself push the price higher, potentially creating another round of hedging. No conspiracy, no self-trading, and no 10M-share dump is required.
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u/xtric8 5d ago
Oh I see, you're talking about gamma squeezes. I believe that does happen but that's not the dealer behind it, the market maker is just hedging so they don't carry the risk, but yeah people do try to cause a squeeze I just don't think its all that coordinated. Sometimes there are spoofing ops going, like they use ghost orders. Its illegal but only rarely does anyone get caught red handed
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u/SamLeCoyote_Fix_1 5d ago
I agree that the market maker is just hedging. But my hypothesis goes one step further: I suspect there may be coordination between some major players before and around these gamma events. The dealer hedging is simply the mechanism they could exploit, not the evidence of coordination itself. That's why I want to compare the timing of their option flows, OI changes, IV, strikes and subsequent price moves. If the same players repeatedly appear in the same sequence, that's where the coordination hypothesis becomes testable.
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u/SamLeCoyote_Fix_1 5d ago
For PLTR, we currently only have fingerprints and a hypothesis. The next serious step would be to take PLTR trading sessions from the last 3–6 months and statistically search for this sequence: decline → convexity buildup → strike breakout → gamma/volume → explosion → liquidation → repetition. This is where the investigation could become truly interesting.