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Short volume is not short interest. This board measures what fraction of one day's reported trading printed as a short sale. It does not measure how much of a company's stock is sold short, it is not a squeeze indicator, and a high number does not mean anyone is betting against the company. Everything below explains why.
01What the number actually is
FINRA publishes a daily file, the Reg SHO daily short sale volume file, that reports for each symbol the total volume reported to its facilities that day and how much of that volume was marked as short. This board takes the OTC portion of that file and computes one ratio:
short percentage = shares marked short / total reported volume
That is the entire measure. It is one day, it is a fraction of reported volume, and it is a count of sell orders that carried a short marker.
02Why a high number does not mean what people think
1. Most of it is market makers, not bearish bets
When a market maker sells you stock it does not have in inventory at that instant, that sale is marked short, even if the maker buys it back seconds later to flatten out. In OTC, where market makers supply a very large share of the liquidity, this mechanical short marking is a big part of the tape. A name can print 70% short volume on a day when nobody formed an opinion about it at all, simply because buyers were hitting offers and a maker was on the other side.
2. Short interest is a completely different figure
Short interest is the number of shares actually held short at a settlement date, published twice a month. It is a stock. Short volume is a flow, and one day of it. They are not versions of the same number and one does not approximate the other.
3. It is a percentage of reported volume, not of all volume
The denominator is volume reported to FINRA facilities. It is not the same thing as every share that changed hands everywhere.
4. Thin names produce loud ratios
A name with a small total volume can post a very high percentage off a handful of trades. The image prints the raw short volume next to the ratio for exactly this reason. Read them together.
The sample board above is a clean demonstration. Twelve of its twenty names print exactly 100.0%, and seven of those did it on under a million shares, one on 349,000. A 100% ratio does not mean the market piled in against the name. It means every share of the small amount that was reported that day happened to be marked short, which in a name that barely traded is close to a coin flip. Rank one is the one to look at instead: 10.8 million shares, which is a real number behind the same ratio.
5. High short volume is not a squeeze setup
A squeeze requires a large open short position that has to be bought back. Daily short volume that is opened and closed inside the same session creates no such obligation. Nothing on this board tells you whether any position was left open overnight.
This is also why the board can look strange. A session where most of the top twenty sit at 100.0% is not a market-wide event. It is the arithmetic of small denominators, and the short volume column is what separates the two.
03What the board can honestly tell you
- Which OTC names had the most short-marked selling relative to their own day, which is a rough read on who was supplying liquidity into what kind of flow.
- How a name you already follow is trending day over day on the same measure. The change is more informative than the level.
- Where a large absolute short volume sits, which the SHORT VOL field carries next to the ratio.
04Where the numbers come from
Two sources. The short figures are FINRA's Reg SHO daily short sale volume file for the session, which is public and free to download, so anything on this board can be checked against the primary source. Prices, percent changes and tiers come from OTC Markets.
The board is drawn from the day's most heavily shorted OTC names, not from a scan of the entire market. A very thin name with a high ratio can therefore be absent. Read it as the highest short ratios among the day's genuinely shorted names, not as the highest in all of OTC.
05Reading the image
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| SHORT VOL | Shares marked short in the day's reported volume, in millions. The absolute size. |
| SHORT RATIO | Short volume divided by total reported volume. This is what the board is sorted by. |
| PRICE | The session close, from OTC Markets. |
| CHANGE | Percent change on the session. The only field carrying colour. |
There is no market-wide metrics line in the header and no advancers and decliners radiator in the footer on this asset, unlike the two volume boards. Those figures are about the whole tape and would imply a relationship to the short data that does not exist.
06What it does not mean
- It does not mean the float is heavily shorted. That is short interest, published twice a month, and it is not on this board.
- It does not mean institutions are attacking the company. Most short-marked volume in OTC is intermediary flow.
- It does not mean a squeeze is coming. Nothing here measures an open position.
- It does not mean the company did anything. The number is a property of the day's order flow, not of the issuer.
- It is not the whole OTC market. It covers the day's genuinely shorted names, not every OTC symbol.
- It is one day. The weekly version covers a full week and is a steadier read.
The Sunday companion, Weekly Most Shorted, aggregates a full week of the same FINRA data and is a steadier read than any single session.