Short & Caught: The stocks investors are shorting right now

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Short & Caught is Stockhead’s fortnightly recap of which ASX small cap stocks are heavily shorted. Stocks that are shorted have investors betting that they fall.

Shorting works by “selling” stocks you do not actually own in the hope of buying them back at a lower price.

Because shorting is restricted under Australian law, any substantial shorting of stocks is worth knowing about even if you own these stocks and only trade “long”.

Stockhead’s two preferred metrics are raw short interest as well as percentage changes within the last month.

Most shorted

While the names on the list largely remained the same, there were some big movers as well as exiters from the list. After Myer’s (ASX:MYR) financial results, it is off the list.

Lithium miner Galaxy Resources (ASX:GXY) remained on top with another $9m added to its short interest. Like many of its smaller peers it has suffered from low lithium prices thanks to an oversupplied market and the electric vehicle market moving slower than anticipated.

Another low commodity price is oil, and Far (ASX:FAR) moved from under $20m last week to $45m in the last fortnight.

New entrants on the list include AI-tech stock LiveTiles (ASX:LVT) and Ardent Leisure Group (ASX:ALG), both of which have short interest above $10m.

Both of these companies have fallen over 25 per cent since late April.

Newly shorted

When a stock’s short interest percentage increase goes up over 110 million per cent, it has clearly gone from being not shorted to being shorted. This happened with Imugene (ASX:IMU), which now has $2.2m in short interest accrued in the last month.

There have been biotech success stories this year, such as Opthea (ASX:OPT) and Orthocell (ASX:OCC), as well as anti-cancer biotechs but none have fallen into both baskets.

The saga surrounding its casinos is hitting Donaco (ASX:DNA) with short interest, as has having to extend a credit facility for Blackham Resources (ASX:BLK).

Whatever goes up must eventually come down right? Shorters have begun to think telco Uniti Wireless (ASX:UWL) will, shorting it over 200 per cent more than last month. They have done likewise with Strike Energy (ASX:STX), which has begun to decline in recent days.

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