How Short Interest Is Reported and Interpreted

Summary

The document explains how investors can find reported short interest and why a figure such as the reported GameStop short interest may appear in market news. It points to Bloomberg’s short-interest function as one source for a company’s reported number of shares short. It also describes European disclosure rules for significant net short positions: reporting to regulators begins at a stated threshold, with public disclosure at a higher threshold and additional increments above each level.

The answer is a brief orientation rather than a full guide to calculating short interest. It does not establish how the cited GameStop figure was derived, explain the US reporting framework, or detail reporting delays and data limitations. It also notes that put and call positioning may offer context about market views, but options exposure is not equivalent to the number of shares sold short. Readers should distinguish regulatory disclosures and reported short-interest data from indirect signals about sentiment.

Key ideas

• Market data services can provide reported short-interest figures for a company.
• European rules require certain significant net short positions to be reported to regulators and publicly disclosed at specified thresholds.
• Options positioning can provide context about market views but does not directly measure shares sold short.
• The document does not explain the US disclosure process or verify the cited GameStop figure.

Tags

# How can anyone know how many shares have been shorted?


# How can anyone know how many shares have been shorted?












(Disclaimer: I'm not in finance. I'm just curious)

Some news sources were saying today that 140% of GameStop shares have been shorted. How can the journalists or anyone else know this number?

## Answer by Jan Stuller (score 5, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/60768

If you go on Bloomberg, type in the ticker of the company that you are interested in and then type the command "SI" and hit enter (where "SI" stands for "Short Interest"), you can see the total number of shares shorted, as in the screenshot attached (the below is for GME: GameStop Corp, as of today, 28th January 2021):

I believe that Hedgefunds and other professional market participants have to disclose their short positions beyond a certain size and it then becomes a public information; this depends on local jurisdiction, for example in Europe, ESMA states that:

"significant net short positions (NSPs) in shares must be reported to the relevant competent authorities (when they reach 0.2% of the issued share capital and every 0.1% above that) and disclosed to the public (when they reach 0.5% of the issued share capital and every 0.1% above that".

I am not 100% sure how it works in the US with SCE disclosures, maybe somebody else will add an answer for the US market.

In addition, one can also see net interest in Put and Call options on the stock, which also gives you an idea of whether the market is betting long or short.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.