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Does the sentence in bold mean "This meant that retail customers had to pay for everything to keep institutions/companies from buying Yahoo's stocks"?
One reason the stock rose so quickly after its addition to the index was announced, Silverblatt says, is that it was owned primarily by retail customers rather than institutions. This meant indexers had to pay whatever it took to pry the shares away from Mom and Pop.
"indexers" as used here refers to managers of stock market funds that follow the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (S&P 500). Those funds try to keep the same mix of stocks as is represented in the S&P 500.
When Yahoo joined the S&P 500 those funds had to buy Yahoo shares to keep their mix of stocks in accordance to the new S&P 500 mix. A lack of shares for sale required the funds to pay high prices to small investors ("Mom and Pop"). This is different to you version, because the funds were the buyers paying high prices to the small investors, rather than the retail customers paying high prices to keep their shares.
