Market value swing: capitalization before the squeeze and at the peak, billions

Name: Market value swing: capitalization before the squeeze and at the peak, billions
Creator: Strasmore
Published: 2026-09-12
License: https://www.strasmore.com/terms/

Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-09-12, from Biggest Short Squeezes in History, Ranked.

as of 2026-09-12 table 2×5read in context →

Market value swing: capitalization before the squeeze and at the peak, billions — 2 rows by 5 columns, computed 2026-09-12 from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
episode	before_bn	peak_bn	unit	source
Volkswagen, Oct 2008	60	296	EUR	Oct 24, 2008 close against the €1,005 print of Oct 28; FT and Reuters reporting
GameStop, Jan 2021	1.3	24	USD	Dec 31, 2020 close against the $347.51 close of Jan 27, 2021; NYSE prints

Rows × columns: 2 × 5
Computed: 2026-09-12
Completeness: No missing values
Source: US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence: Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats: JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for Market value swing: capitalization before the squeeze and at the peak, billions, derived from the stored result.
Column	Type	Range
`episode`	text	2 distinct values (GameStop, Jan 2021, Volkswagen, Oct 2008)
`before_bn`	number	1.3 to 60
`peak_bn`	number	24 to 296
`unit`	text	2 distinct values (EUR, USD)
`source`	text	2 distinct values

Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on 2026-09-12, and the query below is what returned them.

Run it yourself

This is the exact query behind the result above. Change a ticker, a date or a column and run it against the warehouse — no account, no key. The no-signup tier is smaller than the one this page was computed on; a query that reaches past it comes back saying which plan runs it.

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

SQL to run

⌘/Ctrl + Enter

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