tuesday , page-11

Most Shorted NYSE Stocks: Citi Shorts Plummet As SPY Becomes Most Shorted Security

Our speculations that the SPY is increasingly used as nothing but a broad market hedge by asset managers, which are terrified to short individual single names in pair trades over concerns of short squeezes and forced buy-ins, has been proven: as of the end of November, the SPY, for the first time dating back to the start of our data, and possibly ever, has become the most shorted security on the NYSE, at 294.1 million shares short. That this has happened just at the time when the market hit a new 2010 high is nor surprising: as single names melt up, hedge funds offset long risk by selling SPY in droves. Perhaps just as notably, the short interest in Citi, which had long stayed flat at around 400 million shares, has plunged by almost 30% in the last two weeks of November, and has dropped to 293.6 million shares, behind the SPY in terms of total shorts. Yet what may be the most curious datapoint is that the shorts outstanding as a percentage of float in the KRE ETF (the KBW Regional Banking ETF) have exploded from 13.2x to 24.6x! This means that there are 24.6 more shares short this ETF than there is daily volume. Should there be a forced squeeze in KRE, the intraday stock price will likely make the Volkswagen short squeeze seem pale in comparison.