Short Stories: Texas Industries and U.K. Banks

Texas Industries (TXI) which has an earning release Wednesday, has 16.4% of its shares outstanding on loan (%SOOL) to short investors, down from 23% in July. Utilization for this stock is at 60%. The company’s share price has fallen from $55 in September to $35 now, and up from $20 in November. Three stocks who have been affected by the UK short selling ban are Barclays (BCS), HBOS (HBOS) and Lloyds TSB (LYG). We will be covering this topic extensively over the coming weeks.

Barclays currently has 3% SOOL, with Utilisation at 17.29%. The share price has continued to drop since the ban; from 400p in September, to 150p now.

HBOS has 1.26% SOOL, with Utilisation at 4.47%. Like Barclays, the share price of this company has fallen, from 330p in July to around 70p now.

As you can see from this chart of Lloyds, the share price has dropped as short interest in this bank has decreased when the ban was installed. Lloyds has 1.19% SOOL, down from 9% in July. The share price has fallen from 350p to 130p in the same time frame. Utilisation is at 10%.