What does this tool show?

The ranking above lists several hundred US-listed stocks sorted by short interest — the share of the freely tradable float that is currently sold short. For each stock the table shows the short percentage, the days-to-cover (DTC) figure, and price performance over one month and one year. Clicking a row opens the BMInsider detail page for that stock, and the search box filters the list by company name or ticker.

Where does the data come from?

BMInsider pulls the raw data from Yahoo Finance, and an automated script refreshes the ranking once a day after the US market close. One thing to keep in mind: the underlying short positions are reported by the US exchanges themselves only about twice a month. Prices and the performance columns are therefore current as of the latest trading day, while a stock’s short percentage typically changes on a roughly two-week cycle.

How to read the numbers

A short interest below 5 percent of float is unremarkable for a US stock. Readings above roughly 10 percent count as elevated; above 20 percent, an unusually large number of professional investors are betting on falling prices — the market doubts the business model, the valuation, or the balance sheet. Days-to-cover tells you how many trading days it would take, at average daily volume, for all short sellers to buy back their positions. A high DTC means that if shorts are forced to exit at the same time, their buying pressure alone can drive the price up — the basic mechanics of a short squeeze.

The combination matters most: high short interest together with high days-to-cover and a small market capitalization makes a stock prone to violent moves in both directions. High short interest paired with a strongly positive one-month performance can indicate that a squeeze is already under way.

Two practical examples

Example 1 — squeeze watchlist: You filter for stocks with more than 25 percent short interest and more than five days-to-cover and put them on a watchlist. If one of them suddenly rallies on heavy volume, you check whether news or earnings triggered it — as in the most famous case, GameStop in January 2021, when short interest above 100 percent of float fueled a historic price explosion.

Example 2 — sanity check before buying: Before you buy a stock that looks cheap, you look it up here. If it ranks near the top, many professionals are positioned against it. That is not a prohibition sign, but it is a reason to research the bear case deliberately — debt load, shrinking margins, or a looming capital raise.

Risk note

Heavily shorted stocks are highly volatile, and squeeze speculation can end in steep losses just as quickly, because a squeeze is often followed by a crash. Short data is reported with a lag and only approximates the current state of positioning. All information is provided for educational purposes and is not investment advice.

How short selling works behind the scenes

A short seller never owns the shares he sells. He borrows them — usually through his broker, from the inventories of funds and other long-term holders — sells them on the exchange and hopes to buy them back later at a lower price. The difference is his profit. The loan is not free: the borrower pays a securities-lending fee that is quoted as an annualized rate. In large, liquid names it is often well below one percent, but in crowded shorts it can climb to double or even triple digits per year. On top of that, the short seller has to post margin collateral and must reimburse the lender for every dividend the company pays while the loan is open.

The risk profile is asymmetric. A long position can lose at most 100 percent; a short position carries theoretically unlimited loss potential, because a share price has no ceiling. And the lender can recall the shares at any time — if no new borrow can be found, the broker closes the position by force, at whatever price the market demands.

The anatomy of a short squeeze

A squeeze almost always starts with a catalyst: surprisingly strong quarterly numbers, a takeover rumor, or coordinated buying. The rising price triggers margin calls and forces the first short sellers to buy back shares — which pushes the price higher still and drags the next group of shorts into trouble. The options market can amplify the spiral: when speculators buy call options in size, market makers hedge themselves by buying the underlying stock, a feedback loop known as a gamma squeeze. At the same time borrow fees explode and lenders recall their shares. The key point to understand is that all of this buying is forced, not fundamental. Once the last short has covered, demand evaporates abruptly — which is why post-squeeze charts so often show a near-vertical collapse right after the peak.

Contrarian signal or red flag?

Decades of academic research point in one clear direction: heavily shorted stocks underperform the market on average over time. Short sellers are among the best-informed participants in the market — they were early on accounting scandals such as Enron and Wirecard, and shorting is expensive enough that very few people do it casually. The ranking above is therefore first and foremost a risk radar, not a shopping list. The contrarian squeeze trade can work, but only under narrow conditions — a small free float, high days-to-cover, a concrete catalyst — and it is short-term trading, not investing. If you do decide to bet against the shorts, you should be able to articulate why their bear case is wrong: a solid balance sheet, genuine free cash flow, and no dilution on the horizon.

What the data cannot capture

The official short interest figure is based on settled positions and is published only twice a month, with a delay of more than a week — by the time it appears, positioning may have shifted substantially. It also misses economically equivalent bets placed through put options or total return swaps. The reverse is true as well: not every short reflects a bearish opinion, because market makers and arbitrageurs short stocks to hedge ETF or convertible-bond positions, which inflates the percentage without anyone expecting the price to fall. Europe takes a different approach, by the way: net short positions of 0.5 percent of share capital or more must be disclosed publicly, fund by fund, in the registers of the national regulators — while the US figure remains an anonymous aggregate.