Short Interest - MarketWatch (2024)

FAQs

Where can I see short interest in a stock? ›

For general shorting information about a company's stock, you can usually go to any website with a stock quote service. For more specific short interest info, you would have to go to the stock exchange where the company is listed.

Short Squeeze Score

The scoring model uses a combination of short interest, float, short borrow fee rates, and other metrics. The number ranges from 0 to 100, with higher numbers indicating a higher risk of a short squeeze relative to its peers, and 50 being the average.

The Stock Screener on schwab.com includes a short interest screener to scan for stocks with various levels of short interest relative to their total shares available for trading or the stock's "float." A stock with less than 10% of shares in the hands of short sellers might be viewed as having relatively low short ...

Short Interest data is based on a mid-month and end of month settlement dates and released after 4:00 p.m, ET, on the dissemination date.

Put simply, a short sale involves the sale of a stock an investor does not own. When an investor engages in short selling, two things can happen. If the price of the stock drops, the short seller can buy the stock at the lower price and make a profit. If the price of the stock rises, the short seller will lose money.

Signs of a Short Squeeze

These are: An asset trading near its 52-week lows and the price is much lower than the fair value estimated by experts. The reasons for the gap may be many, but markets eventually correct and settle closer to the fair value.

Short interest as a percentage of float below 10% indicates strong positive sentiment. Short interest as a percentage of float above 10% is fairly high, indicating the significant pessimistic sentiment. Short interest as a percentage of float above 20% is extremely high.

Short interest is often expressed as a number but is helpful when given as a percentage. An increase in short interest often signals that investors have become more bearish (negative), while a decrease in short interest shows that they have become more bullish (positive).

How can a stock have short interest over 100%? ›

Short interest can occasionally exceed 100%. For instance, if an investor owns shares of stock XYZ, their broker can lend those shares to short sellers. These sellers then resell the shares, which could be purchased by another investor, whose brokerage could, once again, lend them out to short sellers.

In such a case, they have to compete with each other in a sense, because others are also clamoring to get rid of their stock—and there's no fundamental limit to how high the stock could climb as brokers initiate margin calls forcing shorts to buy to cover.

Who Loses and Who Benefits From a Short Squeeze? Speculators and traders who have short positions in a stock will face heavy losses if the stock undergoes a short squeeze. Contrarian investors who have built up long positions in the stock in anticipation of a short squeeze will benefit as the stock price climbs.

FINRA publishes the short interest reports it collects from broker-dealers for all exchange-listed and over-the-counter (OTC) equity securities.

Short interest as a percentage of float below 10% indicates strong positive sentiment. Short interest as a percentage of float above 10% is fairly high, indicating the significant pessimistic sentiment. Short interest as a percentage of float above 20% is extremely high.

Trying to short a market using technical analysis usually means finding an overbought indicator and a trend indicator that is reliable enough to show the equity is a candidate for a down move. The overbought indicator is most likely either a relative strength index (RSI) or a stochastic oscillator.