Short Interest Update

Nov 12, 2025

Short interest data through the end of October was published yesterday. For Russell 1,000 stocks, the average stock has 5% of float sold short (median: 3.5%). For the whole of the index, that is up a little over 1 percentage point from the start of the year.  In the chart below, we show the average reading across all industries as of 10/31, at the end of last year, and in mid-January 2021, at the height of the meme-stock mania. Current readings are up versus both of those prior periods for Russell 1,000 members. With that said, we would note that for 2021 readings, the Russell 1,000 did not include some of the most heavily shorted and focused-on names like GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment (AMC), to name a few.

On an industry level, auto stocks continue to see elevated levels of short interest, largely due to the presence of EV-only names like Lucid (LCID). Behind that, many retailers and consumer-facing stocks make up the list of most shorted, while industries like Consumer Durables and Apparel, Transportation, and Consumer Services have seen some of the largest average increases. Another industry high up on the list of YTD increases has been out of the Tech sector, with Software and Service stocks going from 3.6% average short interest to 6.1% today. Conversely, the only declines in short interest since the start of the year have come out of the Energy and Real Estate Management and Development industries.

In the table below, we show the individual index members with the highest level of short interest per the latest update.  Two stocks have readings above 40%: Avis Budget (CAR) and Circle (CRCL).  The latter is a newer stock with an IPO in early June, while the former has seen short interest triple since the start of the year.  The third-highest reading in short interest comes from Medical Properties Trust (MPW).  While short interest remains high above 30%, it is down from 44.5% entering the year.

Again, CAR has seen short interest triple this year. That is by far the largest uptick of any current Russell 1,000 members. The next largest increase, Under Armour (UA) has seen an increase of less than 20 percentage points so far, although it started 2025 with a mid-single digit reading.

Small Businesses Concerned Over Quality

Nov 11, 2025

This morning’s only economic report was the NFIB’s Small Business Optimism Index. It came in weaker than expected, falling to 98.2 versus forecasts of 98.3.  The index has now fallen in back-to-back months as it hovers in the 40th percentile of its historical range..

Of the inputs to the headline number, breadth was actually mixed with four declining categories, four rising, and the remainder going unchanged. As for the non-input categories, breadth was far weaker, with only two indices avoiding declines. As for those that did drop, there were a handful that saw bottom decile monthly declines.

Of the inputs to the headline number, the most concerning decline was in actual earnings changes. That index fell 9 points MoM, which ranks as the sixth largest monthly decline in the index’s history (data going back to 1986). Given that those are bottom-line changes, the cause for weaker earnings could be weaker revenues, higher costs, or a mix of both. However, weaker revenues appear to be the culprit.

For starters, the index for higher prices remains in the top quintile of readings throughout the survey’s history, but there was a 3-point decline in October. Meanwhile, the index for actual sales changes (not an input into the overall optimism index) fell by a more significant 6 points in October to the lowest level since May.  That six-point decline ranks in the 6th percentile of monthly moves, and the current level of the index is now in the bottom decile of historical readings. Interestingly, despite the moves in those indices, the share of respondents who reported poor sales as their biggest problem was unchanged at 10%.

One bright spot of the October report concerned financing.  As rates have continued to fall, there has been an uptick in capex plans and expected credit conditions. For the latter, the 4-point jump month-over-month was one of the largest one-month increases on record, and current levels are also at the high end of the past few decades’ range.

As noted earlier, for the topics labeled as small businesses’ biggest problems, poor sales didn’t move in October, and at 10% it ranks as the fourth-biggest issue of the 10 listed. Ahead of poor sales, inflation took a step back, falling 2 percentage points to 12% of responses, and taxes fell an identical amount to 16% of responses.  The single most commonly reported problem in October was quality of labor. Of responding firms, 27% reported this as the biggest issue. In spite of other weak indicators concerning labor markets, that was the strongest reading since November 2021 and was up significantly from September. In fact, the 9 percentage point jump marked a record monthly gain.  What’s more, the share reporting cost of labor as the biggest issue actually fell 3 percentage points to 8%.