This reminds me of the weird hostile takeover of cadburys by kraft where they purchased 90% of the worlds chocolate for delivery (not option, for actual delivery).
Do you have a link? It sounds interesting, but I think you might be confusing the Porsche short-squeeze of Volkswagen stock [1]. I'm thinking that if Kraft bought 90% of the world's chocolate, Hershey would also be in trouble. Besides, I would assume that these companies have delivery contracts already in place for several years.
According to everything I found, what happened was that Kraft's price was too low and they did not want to be part of Kraft's low-growth conglomerate strategy. Once they discovered Kraft was actually planning on abandoning that strategy, they they polled shareholders about what price they would be willing to accept, and Kraft offered slightly more than that. [2]
I tried finding a link. The best I could find was a cocoa shortage in 2009 leading to a price surge, little talk of the cause.
I remember the article clearly. The cocoa was for delivery and the trades were done anonymously (as anonymously as possible) and that"s what made the article stand out. Then a few weeks or months later the talk of the kraft purchase.
Of course, 90% of the worlds chocolate was most likely for contracts that month and not the full year, which I guess is what's making the article so hard to find!
