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Tracking short interest

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So for looking at the short interest in TSLA (or any other stock for that matter), is this really the only way to do it?
Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) Short Interest - NASDAQ.com

It's only updated twice a month. I am surprised that there is not more fine grained reporting available. Can some of the investment gurus speak to this? Is this simply due to a lack of demand for this type of information, so NASDAQ hasn't bothered to put the infrastructure and rules in place that would enable something like daily reporting? Is there some technical or regulatory reason why we can't have better data? Or some practical consideration?

As you can see, the short interest has been declining and daily volume has been shooting up. However, I was wondering if the short interest might be ticking up again as TSLA continues to push all time highs.

Also, another question, over what time period is Average Daily Volume calculated? Is there a standard across the industry? For instance, in this case, on this NASDAQ shorts page, am I to assume that the average daily volume is calculated over the roughly two week period between the last update? That would make sense I guess.

On this <a href="http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-price?Symbol=tsla&ocid=qbeb" target="_blank">MSN Money page</a>, the average daily volume is specified to be over a 13 week period (10.04 million). However, I also have an MSN Money stock ticker thing on my phone, and it says the average daily volume for TSLA is 9.44 million, a difference that is significant enough to make me think that it is calculated over some time period different than 13 weeks. Is there some kind of standard for this?
 
One source that updates short percentage per day:
Interactive Charts

Does anyone know where that data comes from? The home page says "We incorporate short data published by exchanges into our powerful proprietary analytic engines to produce interactive charts and reports.", so I don´t know quite how it´s derived. Do they just plot the data or extrapolate it somehow?
 
One source that updates short percentage per day:
Interactive Charts

Does anyone know where that data comes from? The home page says "We incorporate short data published by exchanges into our powerful proprietary analytic engines to produce interactive charts and reports.", so I don´t know quite how it´s derived. Do they just plot the data or extrapolate it somehow?

Note that it's different data, though. It shows you the percentage of trades during the day that are from short sellers, but doesn't really tell you how many total shares are short at any given time.
 
The short interest in TSLA on June 28 was virtually unchanged from June 14, although reduced trading volume boosted the number of days to cover.

Settlement DateShort InterestAvg Daily Share VolumeDays To Cover
6/28/201319,815,6868,152,7642.430548
6/14/201319,929,11910,040,7771.984818
5/31/201318,584,61515,751,2501.179882
5/15/201323,039,95614,757,3191.561256
 
From the comments threads - Yahoo, etc. and from Sept 155 - 180 calls behaving oddly I would hazard to say this was a big day for new shorts. There was substantial surprise in the comments that it was only driven down 2%.
 
I've been getting the impression that the shorts doubled-down pre-earnings announcement and today as well. I was watching Open Interest, option trade volume and prices.

I "heard" claims that there were no shares available to short too. I don't know if this was misleading chatter or not. I also wonder if they were talking about Aug13 or weeklies.

IIRC our big day last quarter was the week after the earnings report. It took a while for the news to sink in and shorts were hanging on until they couldn't any longer.

Thoughts?
 
I've been getting the impression that the shorts doubled-down pre-earnings announcement and today as well. I was watching Open Interest, option trade volume and prices.

I "heard" claims that there were no shares available to short too. I don't know if this was misleading chatter or not. I also wonder if they were talking about Aug13 or weeklies.

IIRC our big day last quarter was the week after the earnings report. It took a while for the news to sink in and shorts were hanging on until they couldn't any longer.

Thoughts?

I'm starting to wonder if short interest has already declined, especially considering how stable (or stuck) the stock was today with high volume (27m shares).

Tomorrow 4pm EST we'll find out what short interest was like as of July 31.
NASDAQ Short Interest Publication Schedule

It will be published here:
Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) Short Interest - NASDAQ.com

Any guesses on what short interest will be for 7/31 when it's published tomorrow?

My guess is 17m shares.
 
I'm starting to wonder if short interest has already declined, especially considering how stable (or stuck) the stock was today with high volume (27m shares).

Tomorrow 4pm EST we'll find out what short interest was like as of July 31.
NASDAQ Short Interest Publication Schedule

It will be published here:
Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) Short Interest - NASDAQ.com

Any guesses on what short interest will be for 7/31 when it's published tomorrow?

My guess is 17m shares.

Keep in mind it's settle short interest as of 7/31 which really means short interest 3 business days before 7/31 since it takes 3 business days for US stocks to settle (I've worked in brokerage back offices before and know these trivial things). So it's really going to show short interest trades done as of the close on Friday July 26th.

My guess is 16mm shares



...also, it does appear to be true that by the end of the day today there were no shares left available to short TSLA with at most brokers. I just verified that in my acct. this is great news as t means an incredulous short squeeze is still in the making. Seems that the existing shorts did everything they could to keep the price from rising or new shorts came in who will likely run for the hills once the price starts appreciating again. Would be great to see the borrow fee go up again too, right now it's still sub 1% but I imagine it will go up as/if the shorts try to find more shares to sell short.
 
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normally the big short fund would actually borrow from the institution holder so not sure how much of the truth to no share to short. one thing we could do is putting an gtc sell limit order at 300 to prevent your share from being borrow by the short seller if your account is margin account.
 
normally the big short fund would actually borrow from the institution holder so not sure how much of the truth to no share to short. one thing we could do is putting an gtc sell limit order at 300 to prevent your share from being borrow by the short seller if your account is margin account.

My broker actually sources locates from the largest institutional brokers all combined so its a pretty good representation of what's out there. Sure there are some extra shares GS and JP only reserve for their top top tier clients too though but I don't think it's as much as you might think now considering the borrow fee is so much lower now.
 
I've been getting the impression that the shorts doubled-down pre-earnings announcement and today as well. I was watching Open Interest, option trade volume and prices.

I "heard" claims that there were no shares available to short too. I don't know if this was misleading chatter or not. I also wonder if they were talking about Aug13 or weeklies.

IIRC our big day last quarter was the week after the earnings report. It took a while for the news to sink in and shorts were hanging on until they couldn't any longer.

Thoughts?

Q1 ER was on on a Wednesday, the stock price peaked on the following Monday, May 13th.
 
I'm starting to wonder if short interest has already declined, especially considering how stable (or stuck) the stock was today with high volume (27m shares).

Tomorrow 4pm EST we'll find out what short interest was like as of July 31.
NASDAQ Short Interest Publication Schedule

It will be published here:
Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) Short Interest - NASDAQ.com

Any guesses on what short interest will be for 7/31 when it's published tomorrow?

My guess is 17m shares.


That will reveal how heavily influenced people were by the nosedive the stock took after GS "upgraded" them.
 
Are we hoping for an increase in short interest, or a decrease?


An increase in short interest means more shorts would have to cover during a short squeeze.

But a decrease in short interest means that there is already a smaller float, thus a higher likelihood of a short squeeze happening.
 
Are we hoping for an increase in short interest, or a decrease?


An increase in short interest means more shorts would have to cover during a short squeeze.

But a decrease in short interest means that there is already a smaller float, thus a higher likelihood of a short squeeze happening.

Hoping for an increase so that the shorts are out of firing power and their only option is when to start covering (buying back)
 
Short interest as of 7/31/13 (settled date) was published today (Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) Short Interest - NASDAQ.com). As TSLAopt has noted it takes 3 business days to settle, so the 7/31/13 settled date is reflective of short interest as the end of trading on 7/26/13 (closing share price: $129.39).

As of 7/26/13, 25.7% of the float was short (19.78m of 76.93m shares in float). This was an increase from 7/10/13 (7/15 settle date, closing share price: $122.27), when 24% of the float was short (18.49m of 76.93m shares in float).

Settlement DateShort InterestAvg Daily Share VolumeDays To Cover
7/31/201319,783,86612,231,9211.617396
7/15/201318,491,0298,684,6472.129163
6/28/201319,815,6868,152,7642.430548
6/14/201319,929,11910,040,7771.984818
5/31/201318,584,61515,751,2501.179882

- - - Updated - - -

Hoping for an increase so that the shorts are out of firing power and their only option is when to start covering (buying back)

We got our increase. Much higher than both of us had guessed (16-17m shares).

The shorts could have covered pre Q2 ER, between July 29 and August 7. But highly unlikely a large % of them did. So, I'd expect/guess short interest to still be quite high right now.