GameStop (GME) and its historic short squeeze continues to be the talk of the town today with the stock up better than 90% as of this writing. But as we noted multiple times recently including in last night’s Closer, more broadly stocks with high short interest have been massive outperformers.  Breaking down the Russell 3,000 into deciles (10 groups of ~300 stocks each) based on their short interest as a percentage of equity float, the comparison of the most shorted stocks to the rest is stark.  The decile of the most shorted stocks is the only one in the green today with an average gain of more than 2%.  That compares to an average loss of 0.51% for the other deciles. Even excluding GME, that average gain is 1.95%.

The contrast is just as stark on a year-to-date basis.  While every decile is up year to date, the group of the most heavily shorted stocks has risen 26.88% on average while the stocks in the decile of least shorted stocks is up just 2.84%.

In the table below, we show the 50 Russell 3,000 stocks with the highest short interest as a percent of float.  Other than GME, Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) and SunPower (SPWR) have also more than doubled this year.  Of the 50 most shorted stocks, only American Airlines (AAL), Precigen (PGEN), and Acutus Medical (AFIB) are down YTD.  Each of these is also lower in trading today.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options for our best research available.