But now that the nation's collective attention has turned to a new meme, namely the ongoing short squeeze of most shorted stocks by a bunch of millennials and GenZers, we have an excuse to expand the utility of comps with one of the best known periods of euphoria in human history. That's what Bill Gross - fresh from litigating his neighbor - has done in his latest Investment outlook, whose title "Game(Stop), Set, Match" was inspired by Gross' girlfriend former tennis-pro Amy Schwartz...

... and in which he writes that this week's GameStop trading frenzy "has few parallels and is indicative of prior mania tops as far back as the South Sea Bubble of 1720," and "this apparent budding crisis needs regulatory warnings and mainstream media alerts as to the dangers this week, both to overall markets and individual investors."

In other words, the r/wallstreetbets frenzy has provided just the convenient cover for bitcoin to quietly grind higher (especially with the backing of Elon Musk tweets), otesnibly to its next psychological level of $100,000 and nobody will notice, as attention will continue to be glued on which hedge fund blows up next as a result. Incidentally, one can only hope that at some point gold - which is shorted not by hedge funds but the BIS itself - will also catch a bid... but we wouldn't hold our breath.

However, in addition to mere market phenomena, Gross also compares the short squeeze to "populist political uprising characteristics of recent U.S. and other foreign elections" and says that "the will of the "common" investor has imposed significant hurt on short selling, "unpatriotic" hedge funds that have long profited at retail's expense, not only with their 2/20 fee structure but their financial clout to drive equities up or down and to issue capital calls if only to stay alive to rule another day."