Short Stories: Four Retail Stocks

BJ’s Wholesale (BJ), Saks (SKS), Wal-Mart (WMT) and Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) all have announcements on Thursday.

The short position of BJ’s continues to be fairly significant, but there has been a large amount of short covering; down from 36% of its shares outstanding on loan (%SOOL) in July to 24% now. Utilization is at 51%, down from 60% in November. The share price of this company has fallen from $42 in August to $34 now.

Saks currently has 13% SOOL, down from 20% in July. The retailer’s Utilisation has fallen from 80% in August to 64% now, with the share price also falling from $12 in September to $5 now.

Wal-Mart has much lower short interest, with 0.66% SOOL, down from 1.1% in November. Utilization is at 4%. The company’s share price has ebbed and flowed between $64 and $50 over the last six months.

Abercrombie and Fitch have a reasonably high short position, with 15% SOOL, up from 6% in early November. Utilization is at nearly 50%, up from 20% in the same time frame. The company’s share price has fallen from $60 to $25 in the last six months.

Comments

[MattyBoy:]

Good call jepittman! This is one of those case where you just want to sit on the sideline. The last one out looses everything!

On Jan 09 04:37 PM jepittman wrote:

> The most interesting chart to me is ANF. It appears the shorts made
> their move AFTER the decline in the stock occured. Clearly they are
> anticipating another downleg in the shares. But what if they are
> wrong and ANF's business stabilizes over the next several weeks?
> Conditions COULD be right for a squeeze. The shortsellers do not
> appear to have a profit cushion so it will be interesting to see
> how it plays out.
>
> Thanks for the charts. A followup of this same chart would be nice
> in about six to eight weeks.

Jan 09 10:26 PM