Clarence Saunders also became part of the last stock corner on the New York Stock Exchange in 1923. The corner became so prominent, that the whole affair became known as the Piggly Crisis. Clarence Saunders was generous, determined, stubborn, and well-known in Memphis. Saunders became known as the home boy who faced off the financiers of Wall Street who were using a bear raid to try and profit from a decline in Piggly Wiggly stock. ...Once the corner is completed and the shorts have covered their positions at the inflated price, little demand is left for the stock. The price of the stock can collapse, leaving the bulls with a burdensome load of debt. The whole process can end up bankrupting both the shorts and the bulls. Piggly Wiggly shares started trading over-the-counter in July 1920 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in June 1922. In November, 1922, several of the independently-owned Piggly Wiggly stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut failed and went into receivership. Although Saunders’ corporation operated independently of these stores and was profitable, some Wall Street operators saw this as a reason to begin a bear raid on Piggly Wiggly stock. The bear raiders began selling PIggly Wiggly short and spread rumors that the company was in poor shape. Saunders took this challenge personally. He had created Piggly Wiggly stores, created the concept of self-shopping, was spreading his stores across the country, and some bears were trying to create profits by spreading lies about his stores. Saunders decided to “beat the Wall Street professionals at their own game.” Saunders not only used his own money to battle the shorts, but he borrowed ten million dollars from a group of bankers in Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Chattanooga and St. Louis to buy up the existing float. In the Wall Street of the 1920s, bear raids came and went. Companies didn’t go bankrupt because of bear raids, and if the fundamentals of the company were sound, the stock would bounce back after the bear raid was over. Nevertheless, Saunders refused to give into the Wall Street city slickers. Saunders hired Jesse L. Livermore, the most famous bear on Wall Street, to help him break the back of the bear raiders. Within a week, Livermore had bought 105,000 shares of Piggly Wiggly, over half the float of 200,000 shares...
