How to read the data on this site

Everything on this site derives from official regulator publications: the FCA's daily aggregate net short positions for the UK, and ASIC's daily aggregated short positions for Australia. This page explains each view we build from them; the examples below use the UK, and the same reading applies to the Australian section (differences covered in the ASIC explainer).

The league table

Most Shorted UK Stocks ranks every company in the current publication by its aggregate net short position, the percentage of issued share capital held in disclosed short positions. The position date column matters: the FCA publishes two working days in arrears, so the freshest figure describes positioning from two trading days ago.

Change columns: 1d, 5d, 20d

Changes are in percentage points, not percent: a move from 2.0% to 3.0% shows as +1.00. Windows are counted in trading days: "5d" is roughly a week, "20d" roughly a month. Weekends and days without a publication simply don't count as steps. Where a company has too little history, we show "–" rather than a misleading zero.

We colour rising short interest red(more capital positioned against the company) andfalling green. That is a convention, not a judgement. A falling number often means shorts are buying back, which mechanically supports the price.

Sparklines and company charts

Sparklines show the last 90 days of a company's series, scaled to its own range, so they convey shape (building, unwinding, stable), not level. The interactive chart on each company page shows the full archived series with exact values on hover and 1M/6M/1Y/All ranges.

The ʳ marker: revised figures

The FCA may exclude a position while verifying it and later amend an already published aggregate. When a figure we previously archived changes, we adopt the new value, mark it ʳ, and record old and new values in our data files. Details in the methodology.

New & leaving

New & leaving lists companies whose aggregate became disclosable (entering the dataset) or fell below the publication floor (leaving). Leaving is not the same as "no short interest": sub-threshold positions are invisible by design.

What you will not find here

No share prices, no market caps, no targets, no signals, no "top picks". We publish regulatory positioning data and explain it. What it means for any investment decision is outside our scope, and outside this data's power to answer.