11 Most Aggressively Shorted Stocks

Traders also look at the activity of short sellers for trading opportunities. Sometimes, stocks with a large amount of short selling activity could be potential candidates for short squeezes. Other times, a large outstanding short position could be a sign that there’s something wrong with a company and/or its stock.

S3 Partners analyst Ihor Dusaniwsky recently published a list of U.S. stocks that have endured the largest increase in their outstanding short positions over the past month.

Rather than looking simply at shares shorted, Dusaniwsky said including a stock’s share price in the calculation always gives a clearer picture of how aggressive short sellers are being.

“Simple shares shorted does not tell us the amount of ‘betting’ done in a security, by incorporating the ‘chip size’ or the price of the stock in the metric we are actually seeing the increase and decrease of dollar short-side exposure in a security,” Dusaniwsky said.

Stocks with the largest increases in the dollar value of their short positions are the ones getting the most attention from short sellers.

Most Aggressively Shorted Stocks

Here’s a list of the 11 most aggressively shorted stocks of the past month, sorted by S3’s estimates of the increase in their outstanding short positions in that time.

Davita Inc (NYSE:DVA), $552.4 million increase.
Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC), $481.4 million increase.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY), $453.7 million increase.
Wayfair Inc (NYSE:W), $406.7 million increase.
Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN), $386.6 million increase.
Charter Communications Inc (NASDAQ:CHTR), $380.0 million increase.
Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK), $354.9 million increase.
Home Depot Inc (NYSE:HD), $345 million increase.
Macy's Inc (NYSE:M), $327.9 million increase.
Allergan plc (NYSE:AGN), $323.1 million increase.
Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW), $305.7 million increase.