Short sellers are on track for their first annual gain since 2018 on the back of a steep decline in US equities this year coupled with bets against megacap stocks including Tesla and Amazon.com, according to a report by Reuters.
The report cites data from analytics firm S3 Partners as showing that realised and unrealised gains from short-selling total a combined $3.3.7 billion so far this year, a fourfold increase on 2018, the last profitable short selling year.
That equates to a a 31.2% return on total average short interest of $973.6 billion over the year.
Bets against Tesla Inc have generated the most in terms of dollar gains with investors seeing $15 billion in realised and unrealised profits on a total of $19.3 billion in shares sold short. Shares of the electric carmaker are down roughly 60% year-to-date.
Other big winners for the short- sellers include Amazon, Meta Platforms, Apple Inc and used car seller Carvana Co, according to S3.
