/biz/ - Business & Finance

Separately but potentially related, S3 released updated short numbers last Sunday reducing from their projection of short interest from 122% to 113% (a day later on Friday) to 55% on Sunday (while markets were closed therefore in my estimation using the same data set that calculated 113%), which many found to be suspicious. Later it was found that this new number was calculated using the same data set that yielded 113% short interest percentage, but with the significant difference of adding synthetic long shares into the short float equation which is against standard practice.

For a more detailed breakdown a user here pasted a good analysis of how those numbers were reached /r/wallstreetbets/comments/laoaru/read_this_they_are_screwed_numbers_dont_lie/

**

Excerpt:

The real short % according to S3's data is 122%. However, their 55% figure is technically not a lie, but extremely misleading. I will explain everything.

Here is what they did:Sources (S3 head):https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355990194575564801?s=19https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1356004816414269448https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355969693841051650

S3 head is redefining share float to include shares that don't exist in order to be able to say shorted % of float is lower.

it reduces the traditional SI % Float, Instead of Shares Shorted/Float our calc is Shares Shorted/ (Float + Shares Shorted)

So, by this definition, if a stock is shorted 400% of existing shares (total banana count borrowed and resold 4x) and total shares is 100, short % is calculated like this:400 shorts / (100 shares + 400 longs whose shares are borrowed) = 0.8That is, the normal way we define short % would say it's 400% shorted. S3's way says 80%.