The most shorted large-cap stocks in the Americas in May were mining and tech companies including Localiza, Ivanhoe Mines, Canadian Natural Resources, and Tesla, according to the new Shortside Crowdedness Report from Hazeltree, a monthly listing of the top 10 shorted securities in the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions in the large-, mid-, and small-cap exchanges.
Among this group, Ivanhoe Mines saw the highest institutional supply utilisation rate (19.82%) – one of three metrics used try Hazeltree to track shorting activity – which represents the percentage of the institutional investors’ supply of a particular security that is being lent out.
Institutional supply utilisation is an indicator of how “hot” a security is in terms of the supply-demand dynamic. It is possible to see 100% utilisation of a security’s availability making it difficult to establish new short positions.
The second metric used is Hazeltree Crowdedness Score which represents securities that are being shorted by the highest percentage of funds in Hazeltree’s community in a pre-defined category. The securities are graded on a scale of 1-99, with 99 representing the security that the highest percentage of funds are shorting.
And the third metric is Hazeltree Community Borrow Fee, which is the average weighted fee for what funds in the Hazeltree community are paying to borrow a security. The fee is represented as the annualised cost calculated on the price of the security.
In the Americas mid-cap section, SOFI had an institutional supply utilization of 100%, well above the other securities in this group. The security’s community borrow fee was in line with Affirm Holdings (.56%).
In the small-cap category, Fisker stood out with the highest institutional supply utilization (100%) and community borrow fee (30%).
In the EMEA large-cap group, 10 securities had a crowdedness score of 99. Of them, Kuehne und Nagel International had the highest institutional supply utilisation (26.97%) and Lonza Group had the lowest (1.17%).
In the mid-cap category, 10 securities had a crowdedness score of 99. Delivery Hero led the mid-cap category in institutional supply utilization (31.61%), with community borrow fees among the lowest in this group (0.35%).
In the small-cap category, where 10 securities had a crowdedness score of 99, AT&S stood out with the highest community borrow fee (14.08%).
In the APAC large-cap category, 10 securities had a crowdedness score of 99. Ecopro BM led the large-cap category in institutional supply utilization (65.33%). The security had the second highest community borrow fee (5.03%), just behind China Vanke Co (5.6%).
In the mid-cap securities, Rakuten Group and Pharmaron Beijing had community borrow fees that were more than double the mode of the group (~2%), at 4.98% and 4.43%, respectively, while in the small-cap group, 10 securities had a crowdedness score of 99; among them, Core Lithium Ltd led in institutional supply utilization (94.91%) and Jinke Properties Group had the highest community borrow fee (9.38%).
All of the data contained in the report comes from Hazeltree’s proprietary securities finance platform data, which tracks approximately 12,000 global equities across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The data is aggregated and anonymised from the contributing Hazeltree community, including approximately 700 asset manager funds.
