Bad news on a camping trip. And for certain Wall Street traders.
You're probably familiar with the terms "bulls" and "bears" for stock trading purposes. Just in case you're not: bulls are betting that the market (or a particular stock) will go up...bears are betting that the market (or a particular stock) will go down.
A squeeze is a situation where one of those groups gets in a bad spot. A bear squeeze happens when conditions turn against the bears, usually forcing them to throw in the towel and give up their positions.
The connotation can imply that someone is purposely trying to force the bears to surrender. A central bank might be trying to drive up the price of its currency, so it takes steps to squeeze the bears and force them to cover their positions, helping to boost the price.
A bear squeeze will usually force a stock (or currency, or whatever) even higher.
So...a bunch of traders think that Grizzly Inc. is headed into the toilet. They short the stock, betting that it will go down. But a few days later, a famous hedge fund manager says something nice about Grizzly on a finance TV show. The stock rises. It keeps rising to the point where the bears decide to cut their losses. When they cover their shorts (get squeezed out), they buy stock to close out their positions. This buying becomes fuel for another push higher for Grizzly's share price.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a Bear Raid?8 Views
Finance allah shmoop what is a bear raid So this
is a bear raid and this is a bear raid
And you knew you were going there Well i think
there's fraud fraud i tell you Well i think their
product just doesn't mean anything anymore Well i think that
with all those risk they're just trade me in it
too high a multiple Isn't the government going to regulate
them I thought that was a union coming in there
What are these people doing Are they rationally commenting on
honest things they actually believe are elements of the stock
No not at all In fact all of them shorted
the stock it's sixty bucks a share making the bet
that the stock would go down only now courtesy of
the wall street genius journalists being manipulated at the new
socialist times the group is spreading lies trickery and deceit
about stock prices Manipulating the market hoping to profit from
all the negative sentiment they've poured out there into the
ether making already nervous investors very nervous And it was
easy to get the journalist cooperate because well they hate
rich people Right All right Well if they covered it
thirty five that is unwound They're short position which started
at sixty bucks a share Well they'd have made twenty
five dollars a share in profits and that's totally illegal
Incidentally so is the other kind of bear raid but 00:01:29.315 --> [endTime] that we're not going there today Oh my
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