What Is the Short Interest Ratio? A Critical Indicator for Traders

what is a high short interest ratio

Here is a link to the Barron’s page for Tesla, where you can see the company’s short interest information. The image below shows the depth of short trading screening possible, 4,500 stocks to be exact. Generally, a SIR above 5 indicates high short interest, but this can vary by market conditions. This can last a long time and lead to a massive spike in a stock’s price, as we saw with GameStop a few years ago.

It reveals the number of days the current short sellers would take to cover their positions if there were no new short sellers. The percentage of shares sold short indicates how bullish or bearish investors are on a particular stock. For example, if there are many short sellers, this could indicate that they believe the stock price will fall in practical linux for network engineers the future.

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It will also explore some ideas for how to trade options using stocks with a high ratio. With that in mind, here’s a breakdown of short interest, a few examples of stocks with high short interest, and why it’s so important for investors to know about short interest. Short interest is an important concept for investors to understand since it can be a driving force behind market movements. For example, the notable GameStop (GME 6.83%) spike a few years ago wouldn’t have been possible if the stock didn’t have a high short interest. Founded in 1993, The Motley Fool is a financial services company dedicated to making the world smarter, happier, and richer.

Although it can be a telling sentiment indicator, an investment decision should not be based entirely on a stock’s short interest. That said, investors often overlook this ratio and its usefulness despite its widespread availability. Unlike the fundamentals of a company, the short interest requires little or no calculations. It involves short selling securities that you haven’t borrowed from someone else or aren’t confirmed to exist.

what is a high short interest ratio

Understanding Short Selling

This situation is rare and usually happens with smaller, less liquid stocks. Our data shows a high short interest float is above 6%, this represents the 90th percentile of highly shorted stocks in the USA. Register for free with Stock Rover and import this screener code to get a complete list of stocks in the USA with a short interest ratio and short interest percent. The median average short interest coverage of 4,138 stocks on the NYSE and Nasdaq is 4.8 days.

However, some traders may interpret a high short interest ratio as a sign that the stock is may be trading at a bargain. Moreover, stocks with a high short interest ratio have the potential for sudden rallies, which is why many experienced options traders consider the metric to be a bullish indicator. Since there’s no limit on how high share prices can rise, you can theoretically lose an infinite amount of money from a short position. Owing to this potential to incur large losses, short sellers prefer to be able to repurchase shares quickly to close out their positions to avoid getting hurt from a short squeeze. If a previously lagging stock turns very bullish, the buying action of short sellers can result in extra upward momentum. The higher the days to cover, the more pronounced the effect of upward momentum may be, which could result in larger losses for short sellers not among the first to close their positions.

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This straightforward statistic can reveal a wealth of information about market dynamics and investor expectations. An increase in short interest often signals that investors have become more bearish, while a decrease in short interest signals that they have become more bullish. The Tesla chart below shows the short interest ratio, the number of shares short, and the daily average trading volume. In technical analysis of euro the example, one can see that a rising short interest ratio does not always correspond to rising short interest.

Also, stocks can be heavily shorted for a long period without leading to a short squeeze or a price decline. It’s important to not confuse the short interest ratio with short interest. For example, suppose there are five billion shares sold short in August and the average daily volume on the NYSE for the same period is one billion shares per day. This means that, on average, it will take five days to cover the entire short position on the NYSE. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) short interest ratio is another great metric that can be used to determine the sentiment of the overall market.

  1. Naked short selling is illegal because there is a great deal of financial risk involved, may lead to fraud, and can lead to artificial swings in the market.
  2. Investors can access this information through various financial news and data providers.
  3. Days to cover represents the total estimated amount of time for all short sellers active in the market with a particular security to buy back the shares that were lent to them by a brokerage firm.
  4. If the stock price increases instead of falling, the short seller may face significant losses.
  5. Additionally, the short interest was steadily declining in 2018 despite short interest being elevated because the average daily volume was steadily rising on the stock.

If a stock has a high short interest, short positions may be forced to liquidate and cover their position by purchasing the stock. If a short squeeze occurs and enough short sellers buy back the stock, the price could go even higher. The higher the ratio, the longer it will take to buy back the borrowed shares, which is an important factor upon which traders or investors decide whether to take a short position.

Because it’s a speculative tactic, it shouldn’t be used by inexperienced traders. Even those with a lot of investment and trading experience should do their due diligence before executing this type of strategy. A short squeeze is when many investors buy a heavily shorted stock, which puts pressure on the stock price and causes it to rise.

A short squeeze occurs when a heavily shorted stock’s price suddenly rises, forcing short sellers to buy it to cover their positions. This buying pressure can drive the major currency pairs buy and sell in currency pairs stock price even higher, potentially resulting in substantial losses for short sellers. To better explain this ratio, let’s first explain how short selling works in stocks. So, when you sell a stock short, you are basically borrowing shares from your broker and immediately selling them in hopes that the price will drop.

We develop high-quality free & premium stock market training courses & have published multiple books. We also thoroughly test and recommend the best investment research software. In the U.S., the National Association of Securities Dealers and the New York Stock Exchange report short interest twice a month.

Be careful when buying or selling a stock with a high short interest ratio. Even if you are long and think you can benefit from a short squeeze, it is often a madhouse — the short sellers can fight back and push the stock lower. Days to cover is a measure of how many days it would take for all outstanding shorted shares to be closed out at the current rate of open-market buying. Short interest is the total shares sold short in a stock, and it can vary from one reporting period to the next.

Many contrarian investors use short interest as a tool to determine the direction of the market. Short interest is the total number of shares of a particular stock that have been sold short by investors but have not yet been covered or closed out. Soon afterward, Tesla’s stock price suddenly declined as broader market concerns, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, led to a market correction. However, the short interest continued to drop during the year as short sellers had to get out before they took on even more losses. It is essential to remember that the short interest ratio and short interest are not the same. Short interest measures the total number of shares that have been sold short in the market.

The NYSE short-interest ratio is calculated by taking the number of shares sold short on the entire NYSE and dividing it by the daily volume on the NYSE for the previous 30 days. Since the short interest ratio can give you some insight into the sentiment of the market, it can help you in making trading decisions. For example, when a stock’s short ratio is trending higher, then it may be a sign that investor sentiment in the company is declining. In this case, you should see it as a warning sign, and if you’re long, it may be time to reevaluate your position and consider selling. In fact, a study from MIT and Harvard in 2004 found that stocks with the highest short interest ratios underperformed by 15% per year on average.