Silver prices are soaring as Reddit’s band of retail traders attempts to squeeze the market.

There’s a rich history of corners and squeezes in the annals of commodity trading. But they don't often end well for the squeezers1/12 #silversqueeze #silver

If commodity corners have a father, it’s probably Pierre Secrétan, the head of the Societe Industrielle et Commerciale des Metaux, who squeezed the LME copper market in 1887-1889 (yes, a century ago!!!) by buying ~80% of all stocks, sending prices up ~175% | 2/12 #silversqueeze

What Secrétan did for copper, Cargill, the world’s top agricultural commodity trader, copied in the corn market. In 1937, Cargill amassed a massive position in corn in the Chicago futures market, prompting the US government to force the company to sell 3/12

Silver, of course, had its own a massive corner in early 1980, when the billionaire Hunt brothers bought ~1/3 of the world’s silver stocks, and then bet heavily in the futures market that prices would rise. The corner ended after Comex intervened 4/12 #silversqueeze #silver

Legendary commodity trader (and FBI Most Wanted Man) Marc Rich attempted two corners: in 1988 his company succeeded in cornering aluminium, making a killing. But in 1992 he failed to corner zinc (in the process, losing his company, which was renamed Glencore)5/12 #silversqueeze

Talking about legendary traders: John Deuss, owner of Transworld Oil (one of the biggest oil trading firms in the 1970s and 1980s), tried to corner Brent oil in 1988. It failed after Shell and others defeated him. Deuss lost hundreds of millions of dollars. 6/12 #silversqueeze

Almost at the same time than Deuss was cornering Brent, Ferruzzi was doing the same in soybeans. It first cornered the market in May 1989, and tried again in July. But the 2nd time, the corner failed after the CBOT forced it to sell in an emergency order 7/12 #silversqueeze

The Secrétan of the 1990s was a Japanese trader named Yasuo Hamanaka. Working for Sumitomo, Hamanaka built a vast copper position in 1996 (copper rose 88% from 1993 to 1995). When his bet unravelled, Sumitomo lost >$2 billion (and Hamanaka ended in jail). 8/12 #silversqueeze

Since the commodity plays of Rich, the Hunt brothers, Ferruzzi, Deuss and Hamanaka, regulation has stepped up significantly, and corners and squeezes have become less frequent. But they do still happen, with several high profile ones in the last 20 years 9/12 #silversqueeze

Since 2000, these are some of the most (in)famous commodity squeezes: oil trader Arcadia cornered Brent in 2000 (it got sued by at least one US oil refiner); BP squeezed propane in 2004 (got a $300 million fine by the the US regulator, the CFTC) 10/12 #silversqueeze #silver

And Anthony Ward, a soft commodity trader, built a massive position in the London cocoa market in 2010, squeezing rivals and sending prices higher. The British tabloids gave Ward the moniker “Chocfinger” (and chocolate manufacturers complained loudly) 11/12 #silversqueeze