Short Story: Lehman

Lehman's (LEH) shares were 6.7% lower yesterday $13.45  after South Korea's top financial regulator warned that Korea Development Bank should take a "cautious" approach to buying an overseas bank, following the state-run group's rumored expression of interest in Lehman. Lehman's decline led the shares of other investment banks lower with the S&P investment index down 2.8% to 106.7. You can see from this graph that there has been a substantial amount of short covering in Lehman since mid-July, when the percentage of the company's Market Cap out on loan (%MCOL) was 23%, a two-year high, with Utilisation at 65% and 25 Days to Cover. Now, Lehman's %MCOL is at 12%, Utilisation is at 40%  and there are 13.53 Days to Cover. The Lendable Quantity has also gone up - from 140m shares on June 13th to 186.65m shares today which means that the long-only institutions are buying the stock as well.