The blanks – which make money from falling prices by selling borrowed shares that are later bought at a lower price and returned to the owner – had a fantastically profitable 2022 as stock markets around the world crashed.
But in January there has been a strong headwind. According to a Goldman Sachs index, the 50 most shorted stocks have risen in price by around 15 percent during the first trading weeks of the year, and Wall Street’s major index, the S&P 500 index, is at plus 6 percent.
According to S3 Partners, among the shares where the largest share of outstanding shares were shorted are primarily technology and biotechnology companies, including the crypto bank Silvergate Capital, the biotechnology company Gossamer Bio, the online car store Carvana, the crypto company Marathon Digital Holdings, the biotechnology company Allogene Therapeutics and the meat substitute producer Beyond Meat.