Days To Cover Squeeze Long
In plain terms
When an unusually large share of a stock's recent trading volume is short (high for that stock versus its own past year) and the price is starting to reverse upward, you have a squeeze setup. Go long for 1-4 weeks.
How it works
When a ticker's trailing-21d mean short_pct sits in the top quintile of its own trailing-252d distribution, an unusually large share of recent volume is short relative to that name's norm, so a price reversal can force shorts to cover into a thin tape. Combined with a price-reversal cue (price > 5 sessions ago AND > 20-day MA), the LONG side captures the cover-driven move up. An own-history quantile (not an absolute threshold) is used because absolute short_pct runs ~0.40-0.55 for nearly all liquid names and so has no discriminating power.
Live results
83 times picked on its own · 450 times inside a blend (335 beat the stock) · updated 2026-06-06Data dependencies
- Daily prices
Adjusted-close OHLCV for every US-listed ticker; primary price feed.
- Finra short volume
A data feed this strategy reads, refreshed on its normal schedule.
Expected edge
- Reported return
- 100-300 bps over 5-20d
- Tested over
- T+1 to T+20d
100-300 bps over 5-20d on confirmed-reversal high-DTC squeezes.
Example tickers where this is likely to fire
Illustrative only, the signal fires based on the live data, not a fixed list.
Related families
Combines three squeeze precursors (borrow rate + SEC threshold list + Wikipedia attention) into one composite — when all three fire, squeeze is loaded.
When the cost to borrow a stock spikes, shorts are paying premium to bet against it — usually a bearish signal, except at extremes where they get squeezed.
When a stock is on the SEC's failure-to-deliver list and the daily fail value spikes, the forced-buy-in mechanism often triggers a short squeeze.
Explore Days To Cover Squeeze Long on alphactor.ai
See which tickers this family is currently firing on, with live signals and rankings.