We develop a novel measure to identify short squeezes triggered by sharp price increases. These “market squeezes” drive short sellers to close their positions early. To provide a comprehensive analysis of short squeeze dynamics, we also examine lender squeezes, identified through share recalls. We find that stock-day short-squeeze events are rare and short-lived. However, the quarterly proportion of unique stocks experiencing market squeezes is 9.9% (12.3%) in the US (EU), compared to 8.7% (5.4%), for lender squeezes. Our analysis shows that market and lender squeezes are driven by different determinants. We find that market squeezes impair price discovery, consistent with significant declines in short interest after these events. This contrasts with lender squeezes, after which short interest remains stable or increases, and price discovery remains unaffected.

Galí (2014) showed that a monetary policy rule that raises rates when bubbles exceed some steady-state benchmark can paradoxically lead to larger deviations from steady state. Nevertheless, this comment shows that a central bank can always dampen a bubble by setting a higher-than-expected rate, although it may have to raise the rate aggressively. This is a different point from the Miao, Shen, and Wang (2019) comment on Galí (2014). They showed that when the central bank targets a different steady state than Galí considered, raising rates when bubbles exceed this alternative benchmark leads to smaller deviations from steady state.