[EGreg]

I have a question: if squeezing a market results in a guaranteed profit, how come so few companies were able to do it, even on small markets? Goldman Sachs did it with bread and steel I think... but failed. Why would pumping cost less than the dumping makes?

[mapt]

Most markets in the modern world are fairly efficient. This means that they are priced appropriately for supply to meet demand, with all the most predictive facts about future supply & demand, acknowledged fairly well by the market price (which will drive expansion or contraction of that supply and demand next year). If it's possible to squeeze off supply to the market, the market has likely already been squeezed. There are billions of dollars in profits waiting for anyone to pounce on a market that is truly squeezable, and prove the rest of the investors wrong. Most markets are not especially squeezable, because that element of risk to the supplychain has already been factored into their asset prices, and substitutes or alternative supply sources become available for exploration at higher prices, which undercuts anyone attempting to squeeze supply off.

It's pretty safe to assume an equilibrium between these sorts of processes, and a lack of "glaring upcoming shortages that Capitalism Didn't Listen To Our Warnings About".

At least, up to some level - maybe two or three decades - at which uncertainty about future inflation rates and technologies renders it really risky to make long bets of any sort.