Price & Market BehaviorCore researchlive in production

Short Interest Change

Updated weeklyData needs: mediumshort onlylong onlylong short

In plain terms

Watches FINRA's daily short-sale volume z-score. Aggressive new shorting in a falling tape = continuation; extreme highs that revert = squeeze fade.

How it works

Two complementary readings of FINRA's daily short-sale volume. (1) CONTINUATION: when short_volume z-score is positive AND price is weak, shorts are adding aggressively into a falling tape — bearish continuation. (2) SQUEEZE-FADE: when short_volume hits extreme highs THEN reverts, the market is clearing stale shorts — bullish for longs. Anchored in Boehmer-Huang-Jiang (2010) and Diether-Lee-Werner (2009): FINRA short_volume captures intent and leads bi-weekly NYSE/NASDAQ short-interest snapshots by ~10-14 days.

Live results

125 times picked on its own · 328 times inside a blend (235 beat the stock) · updated 2026-06-06

This strategy is a frequent ingredient in blends that combine a few strategies on one stock. It has contributed to 328 such blended picks (235 of which beat simply holding the stock). Picking it on its own is only one of the ways it shows up.

How its picks scored vs. buy & hold

Each pick is graded on a recent year it was never tuned on, against simply owning the same stock

Where its edge concentrates

Share of picks in each company-size group that beat buy & hold

How often it trades

Active vs. patient. Bars on the left mean it waits for rare setups; bars on the right mean it trades often

Return vs. buy & hold

How much each pick beat or trailed simply owning the stock over the test year (extreme microcap moves trimmed)

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Data 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

Tested over: 1980-2005 (Boehmer-Huang-Jiang)

Boehmer-Huang-Jiang (2010) show short-seller flow predicts ~1% monthly underperformance for the heavily-shorted decile.

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