The 6 Most Shorted NYSE Stocks: Short Sellers Pile on Alcoa, Freeport-McMoRan

Investing

Published: January 28, 2016 6:15 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 2:28 pm

As the markets tanked at the beginning of 2016, what were the short sellers up to? Perhaps not surprisingly, short interest was on the rise for most of the top six most heavily shorted stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, Alcoa, Freeport-McMoRan and Vale saw double-digit percentage increases between the December 31 and January 15 settlement dates. However, the most shorted NYSE stock, Chesapeake Energy, bucked the trend.

Note that the 10 most shorted NYSE stocks all had more than 100,000 shares short at the end of the most recent settlement period.

Short interest in Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK) started off the year with a more than 4% drop to more than 230.91 million shares. That was the second consecutive period of decline, and it was 35.3% of the company’s float. The days to cover slipped to about 10 as the daily average volume rose to a three-month high. Chesapeake shares were downgraded early in the year. Short sellers watched the stock retreat more than 19% between the settlement dates, while the S&P 500 was down more than 6%. Shares closed most recently at $3.28, up from a recent multiyear low of $2.69. The 52-week high of $21.49 was seen almost a year ago.