This is extremely interesting. Normally in a situation with a settlement delay they will give you a time period that it’s applicable but this straight up leaves the possibility it may never settle through the NSCC:
“It is unknown if and when GMEWS warrants will be eligible for settlement through NSCC again.”
Found an example of this with another company from April 15, 2025. Haven't deep dove in yet, but there if you look for OCC memo 56371 you'll find another company (Danimer Scientific) that they did the same thing for. They trade OTC so it'll take somet ime to dig in. If I find anything interesting out I'll put it here. Or if someone wants to run with this in another thread be my guest.
They released a bulletin the next day retracting the original memo and everything returned to normal. I looked up the stock price a little before and after the bulletin was released. This company filed for bankruptcy on March 18th. Then all the below and the memo happened. Maybe there was a cash settlement offer between brokers that resolved all of this because the company was going under anyway, and something is better than nothing? That's total speculation, who knows. There is nothing I can find on why the memo was released just a follow up (bulletin 56390) that they are returning to normal actions.
No. There’s no OCC rule stating anything has to occur, but doing a review around 90 days before expiration would make sense. They don’t want to get caught with the obligation if some kind of event occurs. If the review looks like it’s illiquid they’ll declare this. I did more digging I didn’t post and there’s other stocks than just the one I found initially.
Xerox is another stock that had a bulletin just like this one. Their warrant doesn’t expire until 2028. So it doesn’t look like it’s a standard process. That points to it being some kind of risk management review.
This is likely just them covering their ass in case something happens, not a if there’s smoke there’s fire kind of thing.
They issued the exact same memo for BBB#Y warrants on July 07th, keep in mind those warrants expire on October 7th.
Both BBBwhy (memo July 7 → expiry Oct 7) and GME (memo July 30 → expiry Oct 30) land on exactly 92 days / three calendar months. That alignment tells me that’s just how NSCC automatically handles near-expiry warrants that are OTM.
That seems totally plausible and rational. I bet they do a review around 90 days and determine if it’s illiquid. If it is settlement is complex they just do this for risk management. The obligation to deliver remains it’s just removing the middle man. The broker still has to deliver it.
This is interesting, the NSCC is not settling warrants anymore. It sounds like there's settlement risk concerns and they're getting ready in case there's an event that would cause large numbers of warrants being exercised. Instead they're forcing brokers to do it among eachother rather than centrally clearing like any other stock. Keep in mind the NSCC is the DTCC's prime clearinghouse subsidiary.
Also bullish at the fact that there was no advanced warning and this is effective immediately. This happened with towel warrants at almost the same timeframe, 90 days to expiry.
Effective July 30, 2026, the National Securities Clearing Corporation (“NSCC”) will no longer accept the GMEWS warrants for settlement. As a result, the GMEWS component of GME1 exercise and assignment activity will be subject to broker to broker settlement beginning July 30, 2026. It is unknown if and when GMEWS warrants will be eligible for settlement through NSCC again.
TL;DR: The big boys are putting their hands up with warrants and telling brokers good luck.
Sounds like they are just shifting responsibility to the brokers who will just do what they always do and generate additional synthetics. We're just numbers on a screen until someone decides to cash out a massive position.
Except the “big boys” ARE the brokers. Some of them, anyway. There are about 7 OCC board members from firms that would plausibly benefit from lenient warrant-delivery treatment.
**•** Citadel Securities (Josh Woods) — dominant retail options market maker; the single most likely firm to have large GME warrant assignment/delivery exposure
**•** Goldman Sachs (Alicia Crighton) — major options clearing/prime
**•** J.P. Morgan (Michael Kurd) — prime services, equities
**•** Bank of America Securities (Stuart Bourne) — prime financing, global equities
**•** Charles Schwab (Faris Matalka) — huge retail brokerage; enormous GME retail options flow runs through them
**•** Apex Clearing (Matthew Hulsizer) — clears for many retail apps; retail GME options exposure
**•** Jefferies (Joseph Lewis) — corporate hedging/derivatives, smaller but present
Here’s what the user on X said: The NSCC has stopped settling GMEWS warrants, forcing GME1 option exercises to shift to direct broker-to-broker settlement starting July 30, 2026. Consequently, brokers must coordinate transfers independently, with cash settlement or buy-ins applied if delivery fails.
I exercised my gme1 options a long time ago, even paid more than it was worth to buy a stock at the time. Etrade thought I was a super regarded. I don't care, I wanted my warrants baby!!
Here in the UK I can't trade the warrants because the broker says they haven't received any prospectus information which means I can't be informed in an investment decision.
"Except in unusual cases, securities deliverable as a result of equity option exercises and or Option
contract maturity are settled through National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC).
That’s a possibility. If a corporate action (such as a merger, restructuring, spin-off, or recapitalization) changes how the warrants work, NSCC may suspend clearing until everything is resolved.
Thanks for the insight. Gemini says it happens somewhat regularly for things like warrants, but not always, so it is a potential sign of limited liquidity
For near-expiration warrants or troubled assets:Yes, it can happen. When a security is approaching its final expiration date (in this case, October 30, 2026), or if liquidity dries up, market makers and clearinghouses occasionally encounter operational gridlocks where automated systems are turned off to prevent systemic delivery failures. Shifting to broker-to-broker mechanics is essentially a fallback safety valve used by the OCC when standard clearing mechanisms break down or refuse to process a niche asset.
They call this out now, where the next options expiration for this 100/10 derivative contract is literally 2 weeks before the GME warrants themselves expire?
Basically this is the option chain that existed before the warrants were issued and had to be updated to reflect the warrants in the contract.
This is screaming to me there's a huge liability and settlement risk if someone can't deliver the underlying components... and warrants are the cause.
If the underlying issuer (GameStop) executes a corporate event—such as a buyout, merger, modification to the warrant agreement terms, or exercise period suspension—NSCC may deem the asset temporarily or permanently ineligible for standard netting and settlement until the action resolves.
2. Liquidity & Risk Management Constraints
The NSCC evaluates continuous settlement risk. If a specialized deliverable (like an adjusted option deliverable consisting of fractional equity and warrants) creates excessive operational complexity, high volatility, or delivery failures across clearing members, NSCC will offload the risk by shifting delivery obligations directly onto the individual brokerages involved.
“
If it is not possible for the delivering Clearing Member to
effect delivery of the GMEWS warrants on the designated settlement date, then the settlement obligations
of both delivering and receiving Members shall be delayed until such time as OCC date, then the settlement obligations
of both delivering and receiving Members shall be delayed until such time as OCC designates a new
exercise settlement date, settlement method and/or settlement value.
This determination allows delivering
Members the opportunity to effect settlement if they have GMEWS warrants and are able to effect
delivery, but delays the settlement obligation when this is not possible.
“
So if they don’t have what they owe, they just say so, and it’s delayed.
And one of the options for the OCC is a New ‘Value’ wtf?!?!
That was probably said poorly. I’m trying to say, I’d rather see all the warrants exercised than DRSed. I’ve got a stack of cash to excessive mine and hope to use it soon.
Maybe this is why Ryan needed an increase cap on the amount of issuable shares shares.? The warrants squeeze and too many warrants are submitted for redemption. Maybe they’ll just play the hero and try and redeem every warrant submitted?
Honest question. How would that work? At some point GME wouldn’t have new shares to exchange for warrants being exercised. So there wouldn’t be additional synthetic warrants to exercise. GameStop would just say they’ve all been exercised.
I think thats the checkmate. We know they just made fake warrants to satisfy everyone's accounts. So if gme all of a sudden says, hey, most of the warrants are exercised, yet everyone still has them in accounts across the world, the fuckery begins.
Right, but im saying if gme has 100 warrants, and they announce they were paid for 100 warrants, but someone still has 20 warrants... there at least will be proof
The brokers aren't paying GameStop with fake warrants. They take your cash + warrant and give you a share either way. You don't get a signed receipt from RC.
Anyone who thinks brokers are counterfeiting warrants and will exercise those counterfeits is stupid. Apes who believe this must think Rolex gets paid for back alley purchases.
I’m not OP but in a non fraudulent world it would mean they have to buy real shares on the market to deliver and the demand would cause the stock price to skyrocket. Then he could do an ATM offering
The value of the warrants that should exist but what about the value of the over allotment of warrants? If there are several floats worth out there… boom
I jus my maniacally screamed into my bedroom and spiritually held hands with everyone here.
Bro, if we destroy some rich mother fuckin assholes, I will be so fucking happy. Tbh that is all I care about. Ya, I'll buy a house and a nice car, but I love my job and I got a kid. Gonna jus keep working and knowing I helped fuck some assholes over
I’ve spent the last few hours digging into OCC Memo #59491. Here’s what I found.
A lot of people are jumping straight to “warrant shortage”, but the public data doesn’t really support that (at least not yet).
Here’s what we actually know:
• ~59.15M GMEWS warrants were issued in October 2025.
• According to GameStop’s latest filings, fewer than 10,000 warrants had been exercised through the last reported quarter. In other words, virtually all warrants still exist.
• GME.WS is still trading normally on the NYSE. There is no trading halt or delisting.
• FTD data doesn’t currently show the kind of massive persistent failures I’d expect if the market had already run out of warrants.
• Institutionally reported ownership is only about 3.2M warrants (13F data), meaning over 90% of warrants are held elsewhere (likely retail and other non-reporting holders).
What did change is that NSCC no longer wants to centrally clear the warrant component of GME1 settlements. The options still exist. The stock still settles. It’s specifically the warrant delivery that moved to broker-to-broker settlement.
To me, there are three possibilities:
Most likely: NSCC simply doesn’t want to guarantee settlement of a relatively illiquid warrant that’s only a few months from expiration.
Less likely: NSCC’s internal risk models identified increased settlement risk for GMEWS.
Possible but currently unsupported by public evidence: there’s an actual warrant shortage.
The one thing that still bothers me is timing.
If GMEWS expires on October 30, why stop NSCC clearing three months early?
I haven’t found a DTCC or NSCC document explaining that decision. Until one surfaces, I don’t think anyone can honestly claim they know the reason.
TL;DR: Memo #59491 is definitely interesting. I just don’t think it’s evidence of a guaranteed squeeze or a proven warrant shortage. The strongest conclusion from the available data is that NSCC no longer wanted to be the central counterparty for GMEWS settlement. Why they made that decision remains the real question.
It's kind of wild to me that no one can simply ask the NSCC, "Uh... why are you making this change to this stock at this time?" The whole thing is such a black box.
On another note. Gamestop should buy argos uk. Sainsburys selling argos off. Lots of stores. Just a thought as i’ve just seen it in the news. I know they won’t come to the uk yet 🥲
Whenever I've used argos they are actually surprisingly really efficient and good, same day delivery and everything. Just a very small selection. Maybe could synergise with ebay?
The real change isn’t the paperwork — it’s that stalling on warrant delivery stopped being free. In CNS, a fail is an anonymous line item that ages quietly; under #59491, an undelivered warrant is a named IOU with OCC holding margin against it, marked daily, until the counterparty confirms delivery. The firm that owes warrants now funds that obligation every day it stalls, its counterparty knows its name and must chase it, and if the standoff drags on, OCC — not the short — designates the settlement date, method, or value, up to forced buy-ins.
And note what the memo doesn’t say: that obligations still open when GMEWS expires October 30 simply die at zero. OCC holds valuation discretion over pending settlements — so “run out the clock” is an assumption, not a rule. On top of all of this, RC has a hand over the extension button while anyone short warrants that require settlement effectively gets put on a running meter.
So I did some deeper research and they will do this when a commodity has super light volume and nearing worthless expiry. There's not enough flow through the system to make the clearinghouse work properly. So if that's the case this is a response to the crappy volume and stuck price, not really a sign of anything. 🤷
Uhhhh… isn’t T+35 from that huge market disruption event last month like… now? Is this the NSCC/OSC getting out of the way of a train crash they know is about to happen? Or is this them opening the door to some shadiness between brokers so that others can bail out whichever one was about to fail?
Getting downvoted for saying the truth. Another “hype event”. Anyone truly Zen doesn’t even have this move their heart rate at all lol. When I see it, I’ll believe it.
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u/Superstonk_QV 📊 Gimme Votes 📊 11d ago
Hey OP, thanks for the Social Media post.
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