Viral claim accusing JPMorgan of shorting Strategy collapses as filings show zero short position

A post published on Sunday by Max Keiser claimed that JPMorgan Chase was dangerously shorting shares of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and that a 50% stock rally would put the bank in crisis. The claim exploded across X, drawing tens of millions of views within two days. Users demanded a buying campaign. Some posted comparisons to GameStop. Calls to boycott JPMorgan gained traction, and financial influencers began warning of an imminent short squeeze. But that entire story was false. The filing submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 7, under the 13F-HR regulation, shows that JPMorgan held no short position in MSTR. Nothing was hidden; there simply was no short. The document is public and accessible online. Still, by November 25, the lie had already been accepted as truth across major corners of financial social media, even as the real news, buried in the same filings, was completely ignored. JPMorgan dumped shares and bought options The 13F-HR form is a quarterly requirement for asset managers handling over $100 million, and it covers long stock positions and both call and put options. It doesn’t capture short sales directly, but any company shorting a reportable amount must file disclosures under Regulation SHO, or submit a Schedule 13D or 13G if short interest exceeds 5% of a company’s shares. The numbers reported by JPMorgan in Q3 are not ambiguous, as it reduced its holdings in Strategy by 772,453 shares, taking its total from 3,148,136 shares down to 2,375,683, a 24.54% cut. It also held call options tied to 202,200 shares, valued at around $65 million, and put options covering 363,000 shares, worth an estimated $117 million. That last figure, the puts, triggered online claims of a bearish bet. But that interpretation doesn’t hold up. The total size of the puts makes up just 0.00254% of JPMorgan’s $4.6 trillion in assets under management. That’s standard hedging for a bank that size, not some do-or-die bet. Mind you, the puts also come with limited risk. The maximum possible loss is the premium paid upfront. That’s nothing like shorting a stock, where losses can go on forever. Yet the lie spread. No part of JPMorgan’s 13F filing indicated a single shorted share. And broader short interest in Strategy, which stood at 25.28 million shares, or 9.74% of the float as of October 31, according to FINRA, was unattributed. There’s nothing in any disclosure linking JPMorgan to even a fraction of that figure. At the height of the GameStop squeeze, short interest topped 140% of the float, which was only possible through rehypothecation, essentially lending the same shares multiple times. That structure simply doesn’t exist here. The 9.74% short interest in Strategy is 14 times smaller. Then there’s the matter of float. GameStop had around 70 million shares available. That made it easy for small retail traders to push price action. Strategy has 259 million shares in its float. That’s nearly four times more. The shorts during GameStop were concentrated in a few funds that didn’t have the reserves to survive a squeeze. JPMorgan, Harvard, Al Warda, and Emory quietly expand Bitcoin bets While the internet screamed about a short position that didn’t exist, the filings also showed that in the same quarter, JPMorgan cut 772,453 Strategy shares, and Harvard University went the opposite direction. Harvard increased its holdings in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) by 257%, bringing its total to 6.81 million shares, worth $442.8 million. That makes IBIT Harvard’s largest disclosed equity holding, bigger than its stakes in Microsoft, Amazon, or Nvidia. It wasn’t alone. Al Warda Investments, a fund backed by the Abu Dhabi government, raised its IBIT stake by 230% to $517.6 million. Meanwhile, Emory University added 91% more to its Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, increasing its exposure to $42.9 million. As of now, total inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S., since they were first approved in January 2024, stand at $60.8 billion.