What Is a Short Squeeze?
A short squeeze happens in financial markets when the price of an asset rises sharply, causing traders who had sold short to close their positions. It occurs when asecurity has a significant amount of short sellers, meaning lots of investors are betting on its price falling.
A short squeeze begins when the price of an asset unexpectedly jumps higher. It gains momentum as a significant number of the short sellers decide to cut losses and exit their positions.
Key Takeaways
- A short squeeze happens when many investors bet against a stock and its price shoots up instead.
- A short squeeze accelerates a stock’s price rise as short sellers bail out to cut their losses.
- Contrarian investors try to anticipate a short squeeze and buy stocks that demonstrate a strong short interest.
- Both short sellers and contrarians make risky moves. A wise investor has additional reasons for shorting or buying that stock.
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How Does a Short Squeeze Work?
Short sellers make their trades expecting that the price of a stock will fall. When a heavily shorted stock unexpectedly rises in price instead, the short sellers may have to act fast to limit their losses.
Short sellers borrow shares of an asset that they believe will drop in price in order to buy them after they fall. If they’re right, they return the shares and pocket the difference between the price when they initiated the short and the price when they buy the shares back to close out the short position. If they’re wrong, they’re forced to buy at a higher price and pay the difference between the price they set and its sale price.
Because short sellers exit their positions with buy orders, the coincidental exit of these short sellers pushes prices higher. The continued rapid rise in price also attracts buyers to the security. The combination of new buyers and panicked short sellers creates a rapid rise in price that can be stunning and unprecedented.
A short squeeze gets its name because short sellers are being squeezed out of their positions, usually at a loss.
Short sellers zero in on a stock that they think is overvalued by the market. For example, Tesla Inc. (TSLA) captured the enthusiasm of many investors with its innovative approach to producing and marketing electric vehicles. Investors bet heavily on its potential. Short sellers bet heavily on its failure. In early 2020, Tesla was the most-shorted stock on the U.S. exchanges, with more than 18% of its outstanding stock in short positions.
From late 2019 through early 2020, Tesla stock soared by 400%. Short sellers got hammered, collectively losing about $8 billion. In early March 2020, Tesla’s stock finally fell, along with most others, during a market downturn. However, the stock eventually bounced back, leaving Tesla short sellers collectively nursing losses of more than $40 billion during the course of 2020.
Why Short Squeezes Happen
Short sellers open positions on stocks that they believe will decline in price. However sound their reasoning, a positive news story, a product announcement, or an earnings beat that excites the interest of buyers can upend this.
The turnaround in the stock’s fortunes may prove to be temporary. But if it’s not, short sellers can face runaway losses as the expiration date on their positions approaches. They generally opt to exit their positions immediately, even if it means taking a substantial loss.
18%
The percentage of Tesla stock that represented short interest in late 2019. Its stock price quadrupled, and short sellers lost billions.
That’s where the short squeeze comes in. Every buying transaction by a short seller sends the price higher, forcing another short seller to buy.
Special Considerations
Short Interest
When identifying stocks at risk of a short squeeze, two useful measures are short interest and the short interest ratio.
Short interest is the total number of shares sold short as a percentage of the total shares outstanding. The short interest ratio is the total number of shares sold short divided by the stock’s average daily trading volume. Speculative stocks tend to have higher short interest than more stable companies.
Watching short interest can tell you whether investor sentiment about a company is changing. For example, if a stock typically has a 15% to 30% short interest, a move above or below that range could signal that investors have shifted their view of the company. Fewer short shares could mean that the price has risen too high too quickly, or that the short sellers are leaving the stock because it has become too stable.
A rise in short interest above the norm indicates that investors have become more bearish. But an extremely high reading could be a sign of a coming short squeeze, which could force the price higher.
Betting on a Short Squeeze
Contrarian investors may buy stocks with heavy short interest to exploit the potential for a short squeeze. A rapid rise in the stock price is attractive, but it is not without risks. The stock may be heavily shorted for good reason, such as a dismal future outlook.
Active traders will monitor highly shorted stocks and watch for them to start rising. If the price begins to pick up momentum, the trader jumps in to buy, trying to catch what could be a short squeeze and a significant move higher.
Risks of Trading Short Squeezes
There are many examples of stocks that moved higher after they had a heavy short interest. But there are also many heavily shorted stocks that then keep falling in price.
A heavy short interest does not mean that the price will rise. It means that many people believe it will fall. Anyone who buys in hopes of a short squeeze should have other (and better) reasons to think that the price of the stock will go higher.
Naked Short Selling vs. Short Squeeze
Naked short selling is short selling a stock without first borrowing the asset from someone else. It’s the practice of selling short shares that have not been affirmatively determined to exist. Per the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), naked short selling is illegal.
Naked shorting still happens thanks to discrepancies between electronic and paper trading. Naked shorting can help exacerbate short squeezes by allowing for additional shorting that otherwise might not exist. Naked short selling is said to help balance the market. That is, naked shorting can force a price drop, which leads to some share sales to cut losses, allowing the market to effectively find balance.
Example of a Short Squeeze
Consider a hypothetical biotech company, XYZ, which has a drug candidate in advanced clinical trials.
There is considerable skepticism among investors about whether this drug will actually work. As a result, there is heavy short interest. In fact, 5 million XYZ shares have been sold short of its 25 million shares outstanding. This means that the short interest in XYZ is 20%, and with daily trading volume averaging one million shares, the short interest ratio is five. The short interest ratio, also called days to cover, means that it will take five days for short sellers to buy back all XYZ shares that have been sold short.
Assume that because of the huge short interest, XYZ shares had declined from $15 a few months ago to $5. Then, the news comes out that XYZ's drug works better than expected. XYZ's shares jump to $9, as speculators buy the stock and short sellers scramble to cover their short positions.
Everyone who shorted the stock between $9 and $5 is now in a losing position. Those who sold short near $5 are facing the biggest losses and will be frantically looking to get out because they are losing 80% of their investment.
The stock opens at $9, but it will continue to rally for the next several days as the shorts continue to cover their positions and the rising price and positive news attract new buyers.
Real-World Example: GameStop Short Squeeze
A notable short squeeze occurred among traders and investors of GameStop Corp. (GME) during the months following the COVID-19 pandemic. With consumers locked down and stores often closed, analysts and investors expected the company to potentially face bankruptcy because of a rise in competition and a decline in foot traffic at brick-and-mortar stores. GME became a favorite target of short sellers. The short interest had grown so dramatically that it amounted to more than 100% of the shares outstanding.
That led Scion Asset Management’s Michael Burry to develop a bull case for the company: that it could return to profit in a couple of years instead of going bankrupt. His thesis was published and repeated by Reddit and YouTube content creators midway through 2020. Michael Burry and Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen also took along position.
Enough investors started buying the stock late in 2020 and the share price began to rise noticeably late in 2020. From there, it was a snowball effect of retail investors buying stock and call options. The price increase drove out some short sellers and attracted various big-name investors and public figures, such as Elon Musk and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.
GameStop’s stock price surged due to a short squeeze on major hedge funds that were short the stock and forced to sell to cut losses. The stock price went from less than $5 a share to $325 in just a month.
What Is Days to Cover, and Is It Useful for Identifying Short Squeeze Targets?
Days to cover, also known as the short interest ratio, is calculated by taking a stock’s total number of shares sold short and dividing that number by the stock’s average daily trading volume. For example, if a stock has one million shares sold short and its average daily trading volume is 100,000 shares, then the days to cover would be 10 days. That is, it would take 10 days for short sellers to cover their entire short position based on the average daily volume of shares traded.
In general, the higher a stock’s days-to-cover figure, the more susceptible it may be to a short squeeze. If days to cover for stock A and stock B are two days and 20 days, respectively, then stock B may be more vulnerable as a short squeeze target.
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.
Where Can I Find Information on Stocks With High Short Interest?
Finance portals such as Yahoo! Finance have free stock screeners that generate lists of heavily shorted stocks; drilling down into individual stocks displays relevant short-selling information such as the number of shares sold short and the short interest ratios for specific companies. Online resources like MarketBeat provide useful short-selling data such as the largest short interest positions, changes in such positions over time, and short interest ratio. Exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq also publish short interest data for the exchanges as a whole.
What Was the Biggest Short Squeeze in History?
During the 2008 financial crisis, Porsche Automobile Holding SE (POAHY), already a major holder of Volkswagen AG (VWAGY) shares, increased its total stake in Volkswagen to about 75%. The state of Lower Saxony also owned more than 20% of the company, leaving few remaining shares available to trade at a time when the stock was being heavily shorted. Hedge funds and other short sellers were suddenly left in a tricky position as Porsche’s move meant that not all of them could cover their positions. Against this backdrop, short sellers were forced to buy back the shares they sold, which helped drive Volkswagen’s share price up to €999.
The Bottom Line
A short squeeze can seemingly happen suddenly with price rising parabolically. But often short squeezes are fueled by unusually high short interest in the underlying security. When something happens which drives the price of the stock up, the short sellers rush for the exits all at once, attempting to buy to close their positions. This adds fuel to the force propelling the stock price higher and irrationality sets in. What happened to Game Stop's share price in 2021 is a good example of a short squeeze in action.
