How do you make money on a short squeeze?
Here's an explanation for how we make money . A short squeeze can quickly move a stock price higher, often much higher. It can be an exciting event, as traders rush in to buy, pushing up a stock's price. The stock spikes, potentially leading to even more buying as short sellers are forced to “cover” their shorts.
The seller believes the price will drop (considering the assets are overvalued and likely to decline in price). Next, the trader borrows shares for instance through a margin account from a broker. The trader then sells the shares and gets the money from that sale.
Who Loses and Who Benefits From a Short Squeeze? Speculators and traders who have short positions in a stock will face heavy losses if the stock undergoes a short squeeze. Contrarian investors who have built up long positions in the stock in anticipation of a short squeeze will benefit as the stock price climbs.
Short selling involves borrowing a security whose price you think is going to fall and then selling it on the open market. You then buy the same stock back later, hopefully for a lower price than you initially sold it for, return the borrowed stock to your broker, and pocket the difference.
A stock that's in a short squeeze may still have a long way to climb, and if you don't think the fundamentals support higher prices, then perhaps you should look elsewhere.
- What are short squeezes? ...
- The greatest short squeezes of all time. ...
- 1923: Piggly Wiggly short squeeze. ...
- 2008: Volkswagen vs Porsche. ...
- The big short on Herbalife. ...
- 2020: Tesla stock price rally. ...
- 2021: The GameStop surge.
What Was the Bigggest Short Squeeze in History? The biggest short squeeze in history happened to Volkswagen stock in 2008.
Short Squeeze Basics
MOASS, meaning the Mother of All Short Squeezes, as noted, is a trading strategy in which a high volume of buyers drive up shares of stocks that were being “shorted” by other investors.
The strong buying pressure “squeezes” the short sellers out of the market. A short squeeze often feeds on itself, sending the asset's trading price even higher and forcing more short sellers to cover their positions.
A short interest ratio of five or better is a good indicator that short sellers might panic, and this may be a good time to try to trade a potential short squeeze.
How much money do I need to short sell?
The standard margin requirement is 150%, which means that you have to come up with 50% of the proceeds that would accrue to you from shorting a stock. 1 So if you want to short sell 100 shares of a stock trading at $10, you have to put in $500 as margin in your account.
Short selling a stock is when a trader borrows shares from a broker and immediately sells them with the expectation that the share price will fall shortly after. If it does, the trader can buy the shares back at the lower price, return them to the broker, and keep the difference, minus any loan interest, as profit.
The short seller borrows those shares from an existing long and pays interest to the lender. This process is often facilitated behind the scenes by a broker. If a small amount of shares are available for shorting, then the interest costs to sell short will be higher.
Symbol Symbol | Company Name | Float Shorted (%) |
---|---|---|
BACK BACK | IMAC Holdings Inc. | 94.74% |
XTIA XTIA | XTI Aerospace Inc. | 78.91% |
SPWR SPWR | SunPower Corp. | 76.64% |
BCAN BCAN | BYND Cannasoft Enterprises Inc. | 75.67% |
In general, short squeezes tend to last somewhere between several days and several months. There is no real “typical” length for a short squeeze, as each one is unique.
One such phenomena, the "short squeeze," has the potential to make a stock's price rocket much higher overnight. A short squeeze happens when many investors short a stock (bet against it) but the stock's price shoots up instead.
The GameStop short squeeze, starting in January 2021, was a short squeeze occurring on shares of GameStop, primarily triggered by the Reddit forum WallStreetBets.
By late January 2021, GameStop's price skyrocketed to a premarket high of over $500 per share in what was perhaps the most notorious short squeeze in stock market history, now memorialized in the 2023 film Dumb Money starring Paul Dano and Seth Rogen.
Risks of short squeeze trading
During a short squeeze, short sellers run the risk of losing a substantial amount of money if the stock price continues to increase.
Tesla: The Most Shorted Stock in 2023
Tesla holds the top position as the most shorted stock in 2023 so far.
Can a stock short squeeze twice?
Yes, a share can be lent and shorted more than once: If a short-seller borrows shares from one brokerage and sells to another brokerage, the second brokerage could then lend those shares to another short-seller. This results in the same shares counted twice as "shares sold short."
The short squeeze of GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) stock took place from 4 to 28 January 2021, whereby the share price skyrocketed 2701.62%, up from 4.31 to 120.75 USD per unit.
Signs of a Short Squeeze
These are: An asset trading near its 52-week lows and the price is much lower than the fair value estimated by experts. The reasons for the gap may be many, but markets eventually correct and settle closer to the fair value.
First, despite the fact that behavior intended to squeeze short sellers is illegal in most countries short-squeeze events continue to occur, with the January 2021 meme-stock squeeze events being the most prominent recent examples.
A short squeeze occurs when a stock that is heavily shorted experiences a rapid increase in price that forces short sellers to cover their positions by executing buy orders at market price. This generates a massive imbalance between supply and demand where short sellers lose, and the bulls of Wall Street win.
References
- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortsqueeze.asp
- https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/short-squeeze-profits.asp
- https://www.thestreet.com/dictionary/short-squeeze
- https://www.ig.com/en/trading-strategies/what-were-the-biggest-short-squeezes-in-history--210507
- https://www.contracts-for-difference.com/course/how-to-profit-from-a-short-squeeze.html
- https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/what-is-the-moass/
- https://www.warriortrading.com/short-squeeze-definition/
- https://www.fool.com/terms/s/short-squeeze/
- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/screener/short-interest
- https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/ins-and-outs-short-selling
- https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/whats-short-squeeze-and-why-does-it-happen
- https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/12/most-shocking-stock-increases-falls.asp
- https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/shorting-a-stock
- https://www.adss.com/en/howtotrade/learn-how-to-spot-a-short-squeeze/
- https://www.robomarkets.com/blog/education/5-large-short-squeezes-of-the-last-25-years/
- https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/career-map/sell-side/capital-markets/short-squeeze/
- https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/100913/basics-short-selling.asp
- https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/126685/can-a-single-share-of-stock-be-shorted-multiple-times
- https://public.com/learn/what-is-a-short-squeeze
- https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-shorted-stocks-in-2023/
- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortselling.asp
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_squeeze
- https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2023/09/28/how-prevalent-are-short-squeezes-evidence-from-the-us-and-europe/
- https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/a-timeline-of-the-gamestop-short-squeeze