A key to identifying if a stock is ripe for a potential short squeeze is if a sizable number of investors are shorting the stock. Unlike buy-and-hold investors, short sellers have to buy back the shares they sold, as they are obligated to return the shares to the lender.
Short squeezes are typically triggered either by unexpected good news that drives a security's price sharply higher or simply by a gradual build-up of buying pressure that begins to outweigh the selling pressure in the market.
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 a security has a significant amount of short sellers, meaning lots of investors are betting on its price falling.
Measuring a short squeeze can involve a metric called the short interest ratio, a.k.a. "days to cover." It indicates, in days, how long it would take to cover or buy back all the shorted shares. Basically, you divide the number of shares sold short by the average daily trading volume.
The best way to identify short squeeze candidates is to look at the number of shares short relative to a stock's average daily trading volume. This is known as the days to cover ratio. Stocks with days to cover ratios of 5 or more may be susceptible to short squeezes.
For traders, a short ratio between 8 and 10 days or even higher is considered an opportunity. On an occasion like this, the gap becomes difficult to be covered and the short sellers will be forced to buy and raise the price of the stock higher.
MOASS stands for “Mother of All Short Squeezes,” a phenomenon where stock prices skyrocket due to mass buying. It gained prominence with the GameStop stock saga, where day traders challenged large hedge funds. The strategy involves a high volume of purchases to drive up stock prices, countering short sellers.
One of the most famous, significant and big short squeezes of the 21 century is the sharp rise in the stock price of German car maker Volkswagen AG (XETR: VOW) in 2008. Between 24 and 28 October in that year, the company's share price recorded a 376.65% growth, up from 210.85 to 1005.01 EUR.
A short squeeze occurs when a heavily-shorted stock goes up in price, causing short-sellers to cover their positions by buying back shares, driving the price of the stock up even further. During a short squeeze, a stock's price can rise so quickly and significantly that its chart resembles a rocket launch.
In such a case, they have to compete with each other in a sense, because others are also clamoring to get rid of their stock—and there's no fundamental limit to how high the stock could climb as brokers initiate margin calls forcing shorts to buy to cover.
A short squeeze occurs when a stock moves higher and short sellers decide to cover their short positions or are forced to do so via margin calls. As these short sellers buy the stock, the price rises, potentially creating a situation in which more shorts have to cover.
The Bottom Line. Investors can find general shorting information about a stock on many financial websites, as well as the website of the stock exchange on which the stock is listed. The short interest ratio is calculated by dividing the number of a company's shares that have been sold short by the average daily volume.
The GameStop short squeeze, starting in January 2021, was a short squeeze occurring on shares of GameStop, primarily triggered by the Reddit forum WallStreetBets. This squeeze led to the share price reaching an all-time intraday high of US$483 on January 28, 2021 on the NYSE.
A trader looking to short a stock might search for one trading below its 20-day moving average and has a 20-day moving average below its 50-day moving average. You might narrow the list further by looking for stocks that trade at least 200,000 shares per day.
A short seller, who profits by buying the shares to cover her short position at lower prices than the selling prices, can drive the price of a stock lower by selling short a larger number of shares.
How to find short squeeze stocks. Searching for stocks that have potential for a short squeeze involves a screening process. This usually focuses on two aspects: a short interest of around 20% and over, and an average daily share volume of over 100,000. This means that the short interest ratio is likely to be higher.
At its height, on January 28, the short squeeze caused the retailer's stock price to reach a pre-market value of over US$500 per share ($125 split-adjusted), nearly 30 times the $17.25 valuation at the beginning of the month. The price of many other heavily shorted securities and cryptocurrencies also increased.
Keith Gill, known online as "Roaring Kitty," is credited with triggering the GameStop stock rally in 2020, when he posted online that he believed the shares were undervalued. As of June 13, 2024, Gill's net worth includes more than 9 million GameStop shares valued at $262 million, and about $6.3 million in cash.
The Direct Registration System (DRS) allows registered securities to be held in electronic form without having a physical security certificate issued as evidence of ownership.
Roaring Kitty has dissolved his holdings in Chewy, but meme stocks are alive and well. NEW YORK (AP) — A pivotal actor in the meme stock craze that began during the pandemic continues to hold a powerful sway over the movement of shares in major U.S. corporations.
A short squeeze occurs when a heavily shorted stock begins to move higher, prompting short sellers to cover their positions by buying some or all of the shares they previously borrowed and sold, which in turn pushes the stock price even higher.
Short selling is a trading strategy in which a trader aims to profit from a decline in a security's price by borrowing shares and selling them, hoping the stock price will then fall, enabling them to purchase the shares back for less money.
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.