They didn't have them yet, but that doesn't matter, as long as they have them by the end of the trading day.
They had also swapped reports that the rich assholes had illegally obtained. The fake report was that the orange crop HAD been damaged by the frost, so the rich assholes were expecting to buy low and sell high. Other brokers noticed them buying a lot of OJ futures before the report was released, so they also went into a buying frenzy.
This drove the price up before the report from the USDA was released. When it was revealed that the frost HAD NOT damaged the orange crop (and thus did not harm the supply of OJ), the price plummeted.
Dan and Eddie were able to then buy back all the shares they had sold, but at a lower price. Basically, they sold high, then bought low! At the end of the trading day, they had bought enough shares (at a low price) to make the orders they had sold (at a higher price), so they turned a profit.
And the rich assholes all of a sudden, at the end of the trading day, had to pay for all the frozen OJ they had bought.
They hadn't been expecting that; they were expecting to buy low, before the report came out, then sell the futures the same day and pocket the money. They didn't have the cash on hand to cover them when they bought high and sold low.
I think I have this right.
Something like this:
Before the report, they sold, say, a million shares at an average price of $20 a share. Then the report comes out, the price plummets, and then they buy a million shares at an average price of $10 a share. At the end of the trading day, they've covered their sales and made $10 million.
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