[seanhunter]

It's worth adding that in some of the examples I gave above you can be short a stock but settle as cash so you don't necessarily need to locate physical stock to pay up.

In those examples the price of the stock is just a reference point used to calculate the quantity of the cash payment between the two parties so although the short will lose money if the stock rises they are not "squeezed" in the sense they are not desperately searching for stock to buy at any price.