Biggest Short Squeezes in History, Ranked

The biggest short squeezes in history share one shape: more stock (or metal) had been sold short than could be bought back, and the price climbed until someone outside the market stepped in. By market value and by documented losses, Volkswagen in October 2008 stands alone. By percentage move, KaloBios in November 2015 wins; GameStop in January 2021 is the retail case, Northern Pacific in 1901 the original corner, and LME nickel in 2022 the commodity case that ended with a morning's trades cancelled.

How do you rank the biggest short squeezes in history?

A short squeeze is what happens when short sellers, traders who sold borrowed shares, have to buy them back at the same time and their buying pushes the price up on itself; the mechanics are set out in what a short squeeze is. A ranking needs a yardstick. This one uses three and scores every episode on each:

1. Peak multiple: the highest print divided by the price before the squeeze began.
2. Market value swing: how much market capitalization (share price times shares outstanding) appeared and vanished.
3. Documented short-seller losses: the figure put on the damage by reporting or the exchange at the time, printed as a range wherever the estimate was one.

Every number below carries its date. These are historical records from exchange notices and contemporaneous reporting, not live data; the three panels at the end hold the figures the ranking rests on.

Volkswagen, October 2008: the biggest short squeeze by market value

On Sunday, October 26, 2008, Porsche disclosed that it held 42.6% of Volkswagen's ordinary shares outright plus cash-settled options (contracts paid out in cash rather than in shares) on a further 31.5%, a combined 74.1%. The state of Lower Saxony held another 20.1%. That left a free float of roughly 5 to 6%, while short interest stood near 12 to 13%. More VW had been sold short than existed to buy.

The ordinary shares closed near €211 on Friday, October 24, at €520 on Monday, and printed €1,005 intraday on Tuesday, October 28: about 4.8x in two sessions. At that price Volkswagen's market value reached roughly €296 billion, briefly the most valuable company in the world, ahead of ExxonMobil. Contemporaneous estimates of hedge fund losses ran from €20 billion to €30 billion. Deutsche Börse capped VW's weight in the DAX at 10% from November 3. In days to cover terms VW had no answer at all: the float was smaller than the short position. Index funds recalled the stock they had lent, and the borrow fee jumped as supply vanished.

GameStop, January 2021: the biggest retail short squeeze

GameStop is the case where the buyers on the other side were individuals. S3 Partners estimated short interest at 139.57% of the float in the week before the peak. From a close of $18.84 on December 31, 2020, GME touched $483 intraday on January 28, 2021, roughly 25x, and market value moved from about $1.3 billion to roughly $24 billion at the January 27 close of $347.51. S3 put short sellers' mark-to-market losses at $19.75 billion for the month, as reported on January 29. Days to cover ran in reverse here: volume passed 100 million shares on the busiest days, and the ratio looked smallest at the exact moment covering was most expensive. The session-by-session record is in GameStop on January 28, 2021.

KaloBios, November 2015: the biggest percentage move

KaloBios Pharmaceuticals said on November 13, 2015 that it would wind down. Its shares bottomed at $0.44 on November 16, the session in which a group led by Martin Shkreli began buying. After the close on November 18 the company disclosed that the group had bought more than half of the shares outstanding; within days the group held 70%, Shkreli was chief executive, and he said his broker would no longer lend his shares. From a $2.07 close on November 18, the last close before the disclosure, the stock reached a high above $45 on November 23: about 22x in three sessions, and more than 100x from the 44-cent low.

No aggregate loss figure was published. One documented loss stands in for the rest: a trader named Joe Campbell shorted about $33,000 of KBIO on November 18 near $2 and woke up the next morning owing his broker $106,000 beyond a wiped-out account. That is recall risk in its purest form. When the holder of 70% of a company withdraws shares from the lending pool, a short seller can be bought in at any price, the warning behind every hard-to-borrow list.

Northern Pacific, May 1901: the original corner

E.H. Harriman, backed by Kuhn, Loeb, and J.P. Morgan, backing James J. Hill, were each buying Northern Pacific common stock for control, and between them they bought more than existed. That is a corner: holders owning more of a security than the market can deliver, leaving short sellers nothing to borrow. The stock had traded near $100 in the first days of May 1901. On Thursday, May 9 it passed $400 within an hour of the open, $700 by noon and printed $1,000 in the afternoon, about 10x, before closing near $300 once the two camps announced that shorts could settle at $150 a share. The settlement makes this the one squeeze where the loss was fixed by negotiation rather than by the tape.

LME nickel, March 2022: the squeeze that cancelled its own trades

The commodity case involved a futures short instead of borrowed shares. Tsingshan Holding Group, the world's largest stainless steel producer, held a short reported at around 150,000 tonnes. Three-month nickel closed near $29,000 a tonne on Friday, March 4, 2022, closed above $48,000 on Monday, and touched $101,365 in early London hours on Tuesday, March 8: about 3.5x in two sessions. The LME suspended trading at 08:15 London time and later that day cancelled every nickel trade executed on March 8, about $3.9 billion worth by its own account. Tsingshan's paper loss at the peak was reported at about $8 billion on March 8; the market reopened on March 16 with daily price limits. In futures the margin call stands in for the borrow fee, and an exchange rewriting its rules mid-session stands in for the recall.

The ranking, yardstick by yardstick

The three panels below hold the figures behind the ranking, one per yardstick, each row tagged with its source and date. On the last-close basis GameStop edges KaloBios for peak multiple; measured from the 44-cent low, KaloBios wins by a wide margin.

SELECT episode, peak_multiple, price_path, source
FROM (
    SELECT 'GameStop, Jan 2021' AS episode, 25.6 AS peak_multiple, '$18.84 close Dec 31, 2020 to $483 high Jan 28, 2021' AS price_path, 'NYSE prints' AS source
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'KaloBios, Nov 2015', 21.7, '$2.07 close Nov 18 to $45 high Nov 23, 2015 (102x from the $0.44 low of Nov 16)', 'Nasdaq prints'
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'Northern Pacific, May 1901', 10.0, 'about $100 in early May to the $1,000 print of May 9, 1901', 'NYSE record, contemporaneous press'
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'Volkswagen, Oct 2008', 4.8, '€211 close Oct 24 to €1,005 high Oct 28, 2008', 'Xetra prints, FT and Reuters reporting'
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'LME nickel, Mar 2022', 3.5, '$29,000 a tonne close Mar 4 to $101,365 on Mar 8, 2022', 'LME notices, Reuters reporting'
) AS ranked
ORDER BY peak_multiple DESC

Only Volkswagen and GameStop have a defensible pre-squeeze capitalization on record; nickel has no market cap, and its yardstick is the $3.9 billion of cancelled trades.

SELECT episode, before_bn, peak_bn, unit, source
FROM (
    SELECT 'Volkswagen, Oct 2008' AS episode, 60.0 AS before_bn, 296.0 AS peak_bn, 'EUR' AS unit, 'Oct 24, 2008 close against the €1,005 print of Oct 28; FT and Reuters reporting' AS source
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'GameStop, Jan 2021', 1.3, 24.0, 'USD', 'Dec 31, 2020 close against the $347.51 close of Jan 27, 2021; NYSE prints'
) AS ranked
ORDER BY peak_bn DESC

On documented losses, Volkswagen's range and GameStop's point estimate sit within a few billion of each other, with nickel's single-firm paper loss third.

SELECT episode, loss_low_bn, loss_high_bn, unit, source
FROM (
    SELECT 'Volkswagen, Oct 2008' AS episode, 20.0 AS loss_low_bn, 30.0 AS loss_high_bn, 'EUR' AS unit, 'hedge fund losses, contemporaneous estimates reported Oct 28 to 29, 2008' AS source
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'GameStop, Jan 2021', 19.75, 19.75, 'USD', 'S3 Partners mark-to-market for January 2021, reported Jan 29'
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'LME nickel, Mar 2022', 8.0, 8.0, 'USD', 'Tsingshan paper loss at the Mar 8, 2022 peak, as reported that day'
) AS ranked
ORDER BY loss_high_bn DESC

Why the biggest short squeeze in history has a German answer

Ask "what was the biggest short squeeze ever" in English and the reflex answer is GameStop. Ask it in German, "größter Short Squeeze aller Zeiten", and the answer is Volkswagen, and on two of the three yardsticks the German answer is the correct one. The Securities Trading Act (WpHG) as it stood in 2008 required disclosure of shares and physically settled options above set thresholds and said nothing about cash-settled options, which is how Porsche accumulated an economic claim on 31.5% of VW without a filing. The Volkswagen Law kept Lower Saxony's 20.1% permanently off the market, and VW's DAX membership meant index funds held much of the remaining float. Germany closed the cash-settled gap with the Anlegerschutz- und Funktionsverbesserungsgesetz, in force for such positions from February 2012, and Deutsche Börse's 10% index cap dates from the same week as the squeeze. The rules changed; the ranking did not.

FAQ

What was the biggest short squeeze in history?

By market value and documented losses, Volkswagen in October 2008: €1,005 a share on October 28, a market value near €296 billion, and hedge fund losses estimated at €20 billion to €30 billion. By percentage move, KaloBios in November 2015, up more than 100x from its November 16 low.

Was GameStop the biggest short squeeze ever?

It was the largest retail-led squeeze and the largest by documented dollar losses on a US stock, $19.75 billion for January 2021 per S3 Partners. On market value swing it trails Volkswagen by roughly an order of magnitude.

Can a short squeeze happen in commodities?

Yes. LME nickel went from about $29,000 to $101,365 a tonne in two sessions in March 2022, and the exchange cancelled around $3.9 billion of trades executed on March 8. The mechanism is margin rather than borrow: a futures short posts cash against losses instead of renting shares.

Short interest and days to cover for any US-listed stock are queryable on the Strasmore terminal; the screens behind the most shorted stocks and short squeeze candidates run the same arithmetic these five episodes broke.