The SEC report confirms that shorts closed their positions and short interest dropped significantly over a year ago, and it has remained low since. You can't have a short squeeze without significant short interest.
Read Section 3.4 "Short Selling and Covering Short Positions". It describes the short covering that took place. Look at the chart of short interest on page 27. It shows the short interest dropping precipitously, meaning the majority of short positions were closed.
It is honestly baffling how many GME conspiracists are apparently illiterate and unable to understand that "X didn't have as much of an effect as Y" doesn't mean "X did not happen". Especially when it is surrounded by multiple paragraphs explicitly talking about the X that was happening.
Look at XRT short interest. There's plenty of information explaining the situation. If you look at the recent votes by the SEC. GG wanted to make better short reporting since that is a big issue. In multiple occasions hedge funds and banks mark their short position long and then get a small fine years later.
Note: I was never a member of WSB. I have researched GME years before this whole saga and hold a position in my portfolio because I saw the value in the turnaround prior to the squeeze saga. That said, as an investor the mechanics of the market need to change.
I think it comes down to priming, at least for those of average intelligence. They don't read the report start to finish with an objective mindset, they are first fed snippets here and there while being told what to read from those snippets. If they ever do decide to really read it, they are primed to take from it only what they have already been told to take from it.
I have read the report multiple times trying to make an educated investment decision. As I mention in other comments, I was following the company way before this saga. Probably for similar reasons than Burry, Ryan Cohen and DFV decided to invest on it, although I admit what caugh my attention was their dividend years ago (no longer pays a dividend). I researched a lot of companies, GME happened to ended up with this craziness all around. I think this is not going be worth millions per share like Reddit says, but it will be worth way more than it is right now. I am far from a bagholder, I've earned a nice return and based on what I have seeing, things are going to be better for the company. The short part of investment is something I had to learn more thanks to the whole saga. I am always looking for bearish thesis about my investments and why this is not going to be worth more in 5 years. Watch DFV youtube videos, he is far from a meme, his videos are very informative about why it is worth it.
That was without counting any work performed by RC and the turnaround.
From for the report:
* Figure 6 shows that the run-up in GME stock price coincided with buying by those with short positions. However, it also shows that such buying was a small fraction of overall buy volume, and that GME share prices continued to be high after the direct effects of covering short positions would have waned.
The SI was 140% of the float. Small fraction of the volume was the short (without counting short volume), you think it was enough volume for both? There's no way to know how much was that. Gabe Plotkin in his testimony even says that short have plenty of time to cover but it didn't seem that was the case. If you look at the SI chart it seems the shorts got closed right away, but the stock manage to have couple of wild runs to 300 and a few to 250. With no retail nor volume to back it up. Why is that? you don't see that with any other company. Maybe some fraud behind?I really don't know.
Anyway, I am not saying there's a 140% short position (nor crazy 1000% like reddit speculate), but the SI is not 10% nor 20%. The price action nor the options market backs those numbers, I may be wrong but I believe there's more to it. It is hard to be sure obviously, but I don't mind to have a few hundred shares and see how it unfolds, long term it is going to be worth more and I am not counting on any squeeze for that. This is not financial advice, it is just my opinion on something I ended up finding fascinating, from the investment side and the human behavior side.
