On April 9, 2025, CNBC reported on what they called the “Mother of All Short Squeezes” — a market event that produced the S&P 500’s third-biggest gain since World War II. A record-breaking 30 billion shares traded on U.S. exchanges in a single session. The data platform behind many of those short interest analytics? ShortSqueeze.com — a platform we originally built.
What Happened
Heading into April 2025, hedge funds had piled on a record number of short bets against U.S. stocks ahead of President Trump’s tariff rollout. Short positioning was nearly twice the size seen during the onset of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, according to Bank of America.
Then the tariff pause was announced. Stocks surged. Short sellers scrambled to cover their positions, triggering a massive short squeeze that drove the S&P 500 to historic gains in a single day. It was the heaviest volume day on record, according to NASDAQ and FactSet data going back 18 years.
The Data Source
ShortSqueeze.com provides short interest data and analytics for over 16,000 stocks across the NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, OTCBB, and Pink Sheets. It has been cited as a data source by some of the biggest names in financial media:
- CNBC — referenced in coverage of short squeeze dynamics
- Reuters — cited for short selling data
- Barron’s — called the platform’s data “interesting and useful”
- USA Today — quoted ShortSqueeze.com’s analysis: “Short interest is the fuel, performance is the fuse”
What MOTS Built
MOTS Technologies originally built the automated data infrastructure that powers ShortSqueeze.com. The work included:
- Automated data collection pipelines that gathered raw short interest data from major U.S. exchanges
- Data processing systems that transformed raw market data into structured, searchable short interest reports
- Proprietary analytics including Short Squeeze Rankings™ and Squeeze Alerts™ — tools that help investors identify stocks with short squeeze potential
- The Short Screener™ — a tool that merges real-time short interest data with streaming stock data for custom screening
This wasn’t a simple website. It was a financial data platform that had to collect, process, and present market data reliably — the kind of system where accuracy and uptime aren’t optional.
When It Matters Most
On April 9, 2025, when 30 billion shares traded and hedge funds were scrambling to cover billions in short positions, the data infrastructure could not fail. Investors, analysts, and financial journalists needed accurate short interest data to understand what was happening in the market.
The data pipelines MOTS originally built for ShortSqueeze.com were designed for exactly this kind of moment — high-stakes, high-volume, zero tolerance for downtime. That the platform continues to serve as a trusted data source cited by the world’s largest financial news organizations speaks to the quality of the foundation that was built.
At MOTS Technologies, we build systems that hold up when the pressure is highest. ShortSqueeze.com is one example. The infrastructure behind it was built to last — and it has.