Bizarre. What grounds did they have for doing this?
Prima facie there are some similarities between this and the GME situation, I wonder if the outcomes will be the same.
Whether it was a direct $$$ bribe or a call-in to the good old boys, we will probably never have proof.
Which feeds into a lot of sentiment for millenials who haven't made it big with $400k a year jobs in SV.
Rich people - whose wealth has quadrupled since 1990, have spent the last 2 decades yelling at the poor to "work hard" - wages not having increased at all, but if the needle even threatens to point the other way for just a second, the rules are changed.
People working hard have seen their conditions deteriorate, house prices balloon, wages stagnant, and to top it all off yet another recession, this time one to protect old peoples health (very little risk from covid for under 45s)
In the last year the richest 10 people have made $500b in the last year, if you don't see something wrong with that you need your eyes tested.
Gamestop isn't about making money, it not even about screwing over some people trying to make theater chains go bust, it's a cry for help. It raises wealth inequality up the list of issues.
If you're earning $30k a year and working 2 jobs to pay rent, or well in to your 30s and still living in your mom's basement, you see things like this and can't be blamed for thinking the entire system is rigged against you, and you're going to lash out in any way you can. People can say "let them eat cake" or "let them invest in the nasdaq", and usually come out on top. Occasionally though they don't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Saunders_(grocer)#W...
tldr - the short sellers were given five days to find the necessary shares (compared to the standard 24 hours). That's a lot of time in 1923, and enough shares came in to get them out of the corner.
Clarencr Saunders (the Piggly man himself) was left with no way to repay the loan that allowed him to set up the squeeze and was forced to walk away from a truly revolutionary business he had built.
Read Business Adventures, as mentioned in other comments. Cannot recommend enough.
Apparently, the only alternative was for short sellers’ to sell very large amounts of many other stocks, and the Exchange was afraid it would crash most of the other companies’ stocks.
The sentiment, from the book, appears to be that Saunders nearly caused a stock market crash all by himself, with his corner
This error is presumably due to failed OCR character recognition.
I can't access the original article (which is linked for subscribers) but it seems to be because the word is in italics? Or might the brand have had it's own stylistic ligature/logotype at the New Yorker?