On September 11, 2021, a post in an investor forum from 2004 was discovered and posted on Superstonk where it was subsequently read by hundreds of thousands of individuals and entered the conscious awareness of GME investors for the first time.
Original source for the post - March 7, 2004
This piece can also be found in the GameStop Due Diligence Library
The significance of the cellar boxing post is that it introduced an important concept that explained in detail some of the methods by which certain participants (e.g. market makers) could perpetrate a strategy of naked short selling against vulnerable target companies that, when executed successfully, resulted in the target company’s demise and great profits for the perpetrators.
On September 30th 2023, a video circulated on the internet that described how GME investors are part of a cult (lemmy thread). In this video, there is a brief mention of the term “cellar boxing” around 7 minutes in, in text form only (never verbally discussed), stating that, as a term used among GME investors, the meaning of this term is “lack of upward price movement.”
Among other reasons why this apparently well-informed documentary video is very flawed, this provided definition of the term is simply wrong. Nobody uses the term cellar boxing to mean “lack of upward price movement.”
The term is used to refer to a particular strategy of naked short selling that is perpetrated against victim companies by market makers and other financial participants. The fact that an ostensibly neutral documentary would get such a specific term completely wrong and then never mention the term again is something I find to potentially be a tell or a clue.
The provided definition about an important concept was either wrong by genuine mistake, in which case this is evidence that the documentary creator doesn’t really know what he’s talking about for 2 and a half hours, OR, the creator did know the true meaning but deliberately provided a false one. I really don’t see any other possibilities.
Because the concept of cellar boxing is so revealing of the entire alleged criminal plot perpetrated by market makers, (e.g. Citadel, mentioned in the documentary), should one choose to believe in its accuracy, for some entities out there it is very sensitive information if true. But this documentary pulls an interesting maneuver by misrepresenting the meaning and significance of this term and then never discusses it again at any point in the video, but does mock any belief in concepts presented in the cellar boxing post.