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.

1. Davita Inc DVA, $552.4 million increase.
2. Wells Fargo & Co WFC, $481.4 million increase.
3. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co BMY, $453.7 million increase.
4. Wayfair Inc W, $406.7 million increase.
5. Global Payments Inc GPN, $386.6 million increase.
6. Charter Communications Inc CHTR, $380.0 million increase.
7. Autodesk, Inc. ADSK, $354.9 million increase.
8. Home Depot Inc HD, $345 million increase.
9. Macy's Inc M, $327.9 million increase.
10. Allergan plc AGN, $323.1 million increase.
11. Lowe's Companies, Inc. LOW, $305.7 million increase.

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