the short report

The Short Report
FNArena News - January 23 2014

Guide:

The Short Report draws upon data provided by the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) to highlight significant weekly and monthly moves in short positions registered on stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

Please take note of the Important Information provided at the end of this report. Percentage amounts in this report refer to percentage of ordinary shares on issue.

Summary:

Period: Week to, and month to, January 16, 2013.

It's becoming a little tedious, but the top of the most shorted table is still dominated by News Corp-related share variations which are soon to be consolidated, as well as a now familiar EFT. We can ignore these. Among the real stocks, last week saw very little movement in short positions and little change to report in the Top 20, other than Ausdrill (ASL) has snuck in at number 20 to replace David Jones ((DJS)). There were no surprises, with biotech Mesoblast seeing some short reduction along with OZ Minerals, which posted a strong production report. Monthly numbers reflect the recent action on Forge Group and the big drop in the previous week in Kingsgate shorts.

There were actually no weekly short increases of one percentage point or more as we head towards result season, and only four decreases. Similarly, two monthly increases of two percentage points or more met two decreases. Note that FNArena arbitrarily chooses these criteria as being sufficiently significant to justify a note.