FINRA's twice-monthly counts across four and a half years, from the short-seller report of September 2020 to the company's bankruptcy filing in February 2025.
Figures are the short interest as a percentage of shares outstanding, from FINRA data, 107 points between 31 Jul 2020 and 14 Feb 2025.
Nikola Corporation listed through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company in June 2020. The first count in this window, for 31 Jul 2020, shows 3.69% of shares outstanding sold short, and the window's low of 2.52% on 31 Aug 2020 is the last settlement date before the report described below.
From there the reported position rose and stayed high: in the double digits as a share of the whole company for more than four years, and reaching 42.04% on 14 Feb 2025. That high is also the last count FINRA published for the listed shares.
On 10 September 2020 a short seller published a report on the company, and its founder resigned as executive chairman later that month. In October 2022 the founder was convicted on federal fraud charges. The reported short interest roughly doubled over the months after the report and never returned to its 2020 level.
FINRA's days-to-cover figure, which divides the reported position by average daily volume, peaked in this window at 12.66 days on 15 Jul 2022.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 19 February 2025. FINRA's final published count for the listed shares is dated 14 Feb 2025, five days before that filing, at 42.04% of shares outstanding.
This page is a frozen archive. Its slug carries a year suffix so that a later company using the same ticker never inherits this history.
Full history and today's figure: Nikola Corporation. This company has delisted; its page is a frozen archive.
US short interest data: FINRA (finra.org). FINRA® is a registered trademark of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by FINRA or the SEC; displayed for personal reference, bulk redistribution is not permitted (see terms). The narrative describes what the published figures showed and widely reported public events around them; it is not a description of any company's prospects and is not investment advice.