Most and Least Heavily Shorted Russell 1,000 Stocks

End of October short interest figures were recently released by both the NYSE and Nasdaq, and below we highlight the stocks in the Russell 1,000 with the highest and lowest short interest as a percentage of float. For the major indices as a whole, short interest is at two-year lows, but there are still plenty of individual stocks that are heavily shorted.

As shown below, Barnes & Noble (BKS) is the Russell 1,000 stock with the highest percentage of its float sold short (45.4%). Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) ranks second with 40.61% of its float sold short, followed by DIRECTV (DTV) (29.29%), Alliance Data (ADS) (25.98%), and KB Home (KBH) (25.1%). Other notables on the list of heavily shorted stocks include First Solar (FSLR), NetFlix (NFLX), SunPower (SPWRA), and AIG. With the markets up significantly this year, it's not surprising to see that most of the highly shorted stocks are up big as well. Unless you've just taken a short position on these names, it has likely been a rough ride over the past few months.

click to enlarge

Wesco Financial (WSC) gets the prize for the least shorted stock in the Russell 1,000 with just .22% of its float sold short. Mega-cap names like Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, and Cisco are all on the list, as investors don't see much reward for going short these names. It's also very surprising to see Bank of America (BAC) on the list of least heavily shorted stocks.

Comments

[Jay7]

Can we get daily or weekly data for shorted stocks, rather than monthly?

2009 Nov 19 08:15 AM

[oghowie]

Weekly should be good.

I've made some good money squeezing those BKS shorts.

2009 Nov 20 03:09 PM