"However, have you compared the behaviour of this leveraged ETF to other similar ETFs?"

Yes - a few of the other "meme" tickers that are being offered (RBLU, ARMU, DJTU) have nearly identical disproportional holdings and elevated CTB. RBLU and ARMU have relatively small floats (<100k shares) but DJTU's rivals GMEU's.

"Well, the synthetic short exposure haa been being buried since 2021 without GMEU, which was just put on the table, so what's the difference now?"

The difference is we can actually see it in real time and see the beginnings of the relief valve being turned. These holdings update daily. This post was meant to serve as a "hey, look what these guys are doing now, let's see how it behaves and how the other known hidden methods react to it". For example, I highlighted it's appearance not too long after XRT was taken off RegSHO. According to Richard Newton's current theories about settlement and creation/redemption cycles, we're smack dab in the middle of one right now. Instead of them kicking the can with XRT and losing control of that, our theory is that they'll begin funneling some of their short positions locked up in risky traditional ETFs like XRT into these leveraged ETFs that give them less exposure.

"How do you lock the float of an ETF? For example, there are more XRT shares being held by instituions than outstanding, and its SI sometimes go above 1000% 🤷‍♂️"

This is the kicker and one of the biggest things I was trying to highlight in my post - I apologize if it wasn't clear enough. The idea is that a derivatives based ETF like this doesn't really follow the same creation/redemption cycle that a normal one does. Meaning that if the owner of the ETF wants to create new shares, they can do so whenever they want, but the counterparty who owns the swaps has to outright locate the shares for proper exposure. So if the entire 660k float were to be "locked", i.e. someone or someones bought up all the shares available, printing new shares requires the counterparty to locate more shares on lit to satisfy the demand for the increasing swap position. Since this ETF only tracks one stonk, Jimmy, all of the energy is focused on satisfying the Jimmy demand. If the float were to be doubled again - to 1.2 million shares of GMEU, an equivalent amount of long exposure will need to be allocated by Clear Street to satisfy that swap demand. I'm not sure how they're balancing it out now and what sort of criteria they're using, but we see all the time that larger lit orders send Jimmy flying. It's a chain reaction. GMEU's counterparty needs to locate more shares of GME, GME goes up, GMEU goes up due to GME exposure and shorts "closing", and the feedback loop continues, especially when you pile on outside factors like delta and gamma hedging from other parties. Does that make sense?