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Short Interest Screener — Float % & Days to Cover
The 50 most-shorted US stocks ranked by float %, with days to cover and squeeze risk. Sortable. Updated every 6 hours via Yahoo Finance.
How to Read Short Interest Data
Short interest tells you how many shares of a stock traders have borrowed and sold short — betting the price will fall. The two numbers that matter most are short % of float and days to cover. Float % tells you what fraction of the tradeable shares are on the short side; days to cover tells you how long it would take those shorts to exit at normal daily volume. When both numbers are high simultaneously, a single positive catalyst can trigger a short squeeze: short sellers scramble to cover, their buying drives the price up, and the rising price forces more covering in a feedback loop.
The Squeeze Risk badge in this screener flags stocks where short float exceeds 20% and days-to-cover exceeds 5. These are the conditions that historically precede the most violent squeezes — but a crowded short position is not a trade by itself. You need a catalyst: an earnings beat, a buyout rumor, a drug trial result, or a broader market rally that forces de-risking across the book. High short interest without a catalyst often stays high for months; the stock can keep falling even with 40% of the float short.
Short % of Float vs. Short Interest
These two terms are often confused. Short interest is the raw number of shares sold short (shown as "Shares Short" in this screener). Short % of float normalizes that number against the available float — a far more useful signal. A stock with 10 million shares short sounds large until you learn it has a 2-billion-share float: that is only 0.5%, barely noteworthy. A stock with 5 million shares short on a 15-million-share float is 33% shorted — a completely different risk profile.
Always use float % as your primary sort. Shares-short in isolation is a size signal, not a crowding signal. Days-to-cover adds the time dimension: even a 30% short float is manageable if the stock trades 50 million shares a day, because short sellers can exit in minutes. The dangerous combination is high float % and low liquidity — that is what the days-to-cover column captures.
How Short Squeezes Work
A short squeeze is a mechanical event, not a fundamental re-rating. When a heavily-shorted stock starts rising — whether from real news or coordinated retail buying — short sellers face two bad choices: absorb increasing losses or buy back shares to close the position. When enough of them choose to cover simultaneously, their buying pressure accelerates the price move, triggering stop-loss orders and forcing more covering. The squeeze feeds itself until either the short interest is fully cleared or new shorts step in to absorb the move.
The GameStop squeeze of January 2021 is the canonical modern example: short interest exceeded 100% of the float (possible via rehypothecation of borrowed shares), and the stock rose from $20 to $483 in two weeks. More typical squeezes are smaller — a 30–50% short float stock with a positive earnings surprise, rising 20–40% in a day as shorts cover. Use the days-to-cover column to gauge duration: a 10-day cover means even a moderate price move sustained over 10 days could wipe out a short position that entered at a 10% margin of safety.
Frequently asked questions
What short % of float is considered high?
A short float above 10% is elevated. Above 20% is heavily shorted. Above 30% is extreme — a meaningful portion of the tradeable float is positioned against the stock. The highest short floats in the market often sit in beaten-down small caps, meme stocks, or companies with ongoing accounting concerns.
Can a stock's short interest exceed 100% of the float?
Yes, because of how short selling works. When a broker lends shares to a short seller, the borrower sells them to a third party who can also lend them out again. This rehypothecation means the same shares can be shorted multiple times, producing short interest above 100% of the float. GameStop famously exceeded 140% before the January 2021 squeeze.
Is high short interest bearish or a contrarian signal?
Both, depending on what follows. High short interest reflects the collective judgment of professional investors who have done enough conviction research to borrow shares and pay the borrow rate. That is a meaningful bearish signal — these are not uninformed traders. But when the shorts are wrong, the forced covering creates violent upside. The signal tells you where risk is concentrated, not which direction the stock goes.
What is a good days-to-cover ratio?
Low days-to-cover (under 3) means short sellers could exit quickly — a squeeze is less likely to sustain. Days-to-cover above 5 means covering would take more than a week at normal volume, enough time for a positive catalyst to compound. The Squeeze Risk badge in this screener uses a threshold of 5 days combined with 20%+ float short.
Why does short interest data lag by two weeks?
The NYSE and Nasdaq publish official short interest data twice per month: settlement dates around the 15th and the last trading day. Each settlement date takes a few days to tabulate and publish. Yahoo Finance reflects the most recent official report, which can be up to 15 business days old. Intraday short interest estimates (from some paid data providers) exist but are not disclosed by exchanges.
How is days to cover calculated?
Days to cover = shares short ÷ average daily volume. If 10 million shares are short and the stock trades 2 million shares per day on average, days-to-cover is 5. Note that covering rarely happens at normal volume — a squeeze implies above-average volume — so actual days to unwind is typically shorter than the theoretical figure. Think of it as a risk magnitude estimate, not a precise timeline.