Forum Topics Tracking which shares are being shorted - opinions / comment sought
tomsmithidg
Added 10 months ago

I have often wondered (particularly when shares appear to be moving contrary to logic) whether it's worth tracking what shares are being shorted, how big the effect is on daily prices, eg - what percentage of a stock over how long a period makes for a potentially big price drop, and how (and when) exactly 'shorting' is reported. Obviously shorting can be fatal, see ABC Childcare, but I wonder if it can be a useful guide for anticipating potential share falls in the short term.

I've looked at the ASX and ASIC shorting lists - not super user friendly (but I might try my hand at some pivot tables for the ASIC Excel Year to Date Aggregate Short Report).

For example, today the ASIC Daily Aggragate Short position report had almost 7% of 'Total Product in Issue' reported as Short Positions for BGL, which I think would constitute 'moderate shorting', and the shares were down about 0.84%. However, DRO had over 10% of 'Total Product in Issue' reported as Short and it was up almost 10% today.

So a couple of questions:

  1. Does anyone have an opinion / experience on tracking short activity?
  2. Has anyone tried any of the other resources for short tracking e.g. smallcaps.com.au or fintel.io?


Interested in peoples thoughts.

Cheers, Tom

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mushroompanda
Added 10 months ago

@tomsmithidg have you checked out https://www.shortman.com.au/?

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tomsmithidg
Added 10 months ago

I hadn't heard of that but certainly will. Thanks mate.

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tomsmithidg
Added 10 months ago

Interesting bit of info from that site straight away @mushroompanda, "It is important to note that ASIC releases this information with a delay of 4 trading days (T+4)". Something I'd prefer to know the morning of.

Thanks again

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mushroompanda
Added 10 months ago

@tomsmithidg that might be the best you can get.

ASIC releases the gross number of stocks shorted for a particular day - the following day: https://www.asx.com.au/data/shortsell.txt

Gross numbers have very limited info, because you don't know how many short sold shares were bought back. As shortman mentions, ASIC only discloses net positions T+4.

I look at shorts from time-to-time just to understand how much of a "battleground" a particular name is. As for using it as a signal - it assumes that somehow the cumulative short seller is smarter than the cumulative long (or vice versa). Anecdotally I just haven't seen this to be the case. E.g. you can see the shorts in AD8 build up into results, and it happened to be a good result, and they got killed.

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Valueinvestor0909
Added 10 months ago

I agree with @mushroompanda. Just because stock is shorted doesn't actually mean too much. I have experienced that many times. From this earning season take AD8, MP1 or NAN for example

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UlladullaDave
Added 10 months ago

I look at shorts from time-to-time just to understand how much of a "battleground" a particular name is. As for using it as a signal - it assumes that somehow the cumulative short seller is smarter than the cumulative long (or vice versa). Anecdotally I just haven't seen this to be the case. E.g. you can see the shorts in AD8 build up into results, and it happened to be a good result, and they got killed.

I do this too. It can also explain the price action around price sensitive announcements. In the case of AD8 a lot of that buying on Monday and Tuesday wasn't bulls it was bears covering their shorts.

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