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 Hug?7 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is a bear-hug? well you remember old uncle [Uncle Larry appears]
Larry right the former 350 pound Olympic wrestler who could braid his own chest
hair yeah kind of gross but no that's the guy well he got out of the bathtub [Larry in a bath tub]
once while y'all were at your ski cabin in Wyoming and a real bear saw him
through the window and well simply put fell in love yeah that's how
Bears do it well Larry went over to the bear family [Larry wearing bear fur]
for Christmas and when he walked in a little bear dude guy screamed Mom, there's a
human in the cave but Larry fit right in he hugged each of the Bear Jamboree [Larry hugging a bear]
family really hard they wanted to call it a human hug but well somehow the name
didn't stick so uncle Larry is that guy well he hugged at Christmas
bears humans and whatever he hugged hard.. hard enough to squeeze the air out of
anyone or anything and if he suddenly let go well you had a really hard time [Larry lets bear go and bear struggles to breathe]
catching your breath well that's the setting of a Wall Street bear hug, a big
hairy powerful player often recently bathed ideally yeah not still in the
bathtub making a bid to buy a weaker competitor at a price substantially
higher than the current market price of the target it's a hug and the target had [Larry chasing a man for a hug]
better hugged back and be acquired or else why because if the bear hugger
suddenly lets go while the target falls back from the $28
a share of the bear is offering to buy it falls all the way back to the 15
dollars it was trading at before all that you know hugging started and if the
bear walks away and the company just languishes at 15 bucks a share without [Bear walks away with company]
any other bidders.. the board gets their pants sued off by shareholders who
are just "robbed" of $13 a share in gains likely meaning that the
entire company reboots and in hindsight well that it would have been oh so much
better to let Larry just move into the cave where you know he really felt at [Larry in the cave with bears]
home with everyone there check out those salmon..
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