I think you're right that short positions is a contrarian...

I think you're right that short positions is a contrarian indicator. Been monitoring the IG short positions Vs price (want to graph this out proper), but from my observations it's quite clear that a lot of them short whenever price moves up. If they think it's a good short at 5550, they think it's even better to short at 5600. There's no sense among most retailers about support, resistance levels or understanding of breakouts - no volume profile analysis, nothing. Completely random, just pull the trigger and short level of dumbness. I bet that many don't understand position sizing and risk management either. However, from analyzing IG data, I believe that most who are on this platform are short-term traders and not hedgers and the ones who hold onto their short positions and just get squeezed out.

Just this morning XJO was down by 15 points, retail short positions went up again and markets moved up. It's downright sad that people fight the trend and lose money. Speaking as someone who followed TV news several years ago and lost a sizable chunk of money.


PS - here's the spec sentiment indicator from FXCM
https://www.dailyfx.com/sentiment