Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

Today's article is an update as to whether the "Shorters" (the big institutional players who have heavily shorted 25 stocks) or the "Squeezers" (small retail speculators who are making an effort to drive the shorted stocks up in price to thwart the shorters) are winning the "game". 

In my first article earlier this month, entitled Short Squeeze Activity..., I explained all things short stock related, namely:

1. Why Do Speculators 'Short' Stocks?
2. How Do You Short A Stock?
3. What Is Short Volume?
4. What Is Short Interest?
5. What Is A Short Squeeze?
6. Which Stocks Have Outrageously High (i.e. +30%) Percentage of Short Sales to Total Shares?

and identified the 15 stocks that have short sales in excess of 30% of total shares.  Source: shortsqueeze.com

My follow-up article two weeks ago, entitled Who's Winning - The 'Shorters' Or The 'Squeezers'?, expanded the list to include an additional 10 stocks with short sales in excess of 25% of total shares. 

This update of the performance of the 25 stocks in play, as identified in the links above, reveals that the "Shorters" are winning.

• During the first 10 weeks of the contest (from about mid-November, 2021, until the end of January, 2022) the "Squeezers" were still in the formative stage with the "Shorters" being successful in driving down the prices of the 25 stocks by 47%, on average.
• Since the beginning of February, however, the "Squeezers" have reduced the decline to less than 1%, on average, but have only been able to achieve price increases in 9 of the 25 stocks and only appreciably in the following 5 stocks:
  1. Lordtown Motors (RIDE): +31.0%
  2. Blink Charging (BLNK): +26.3%    
  3. Beam Global (BEEM): +24.3%
  4. Arch Resources (ARCH): +19.0%
  5. iStar Inc., (STAR): +15.7%

Conclusion

The big players, the "Shorters", have shorted the 25 stocks expecting that those stocks would drop in price going forward and that, as such, they would eventually reap major profits as a result. Currently, they are winning as the attempt by the small retail investors, the "Squeezers", to drive the prices of such highly shorted stocks down significantly in price has not succeeded across the board - at least, not as yet.