At the House hearing, Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) asked about the dangers of short selling. “GME [GameStop] sold short 140 percent. Why isn’t that manipulation?” She meant that short sellers sold 40 percent more shares in GameStop than existed. They were phantom shares that didn’t exist but that were posted in buyers’ accounts as “entitlements.” The buyers have no idea they don’t have real shares. They can sell and even loan those digital entitlements.
In other words, large numbers of “locates” or “borrows” were fake, making the shorts “naked.” Why does it matter? Because naked short selling causes the number of shares in the market to increase, which normally makes their value drop; more shares equals less value. And it can massively disrupt the market, as GameStop showed.