Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

This 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". 

My initial article on the subject (see here) 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?

and identified 15 stocks that had short sales in excess of 30% of total shares, namely: Arch Resources, Beam Global, Bed Bath & Beyond, Beyond Meat, Big 5 Sporting, Blink Charging, Cassava Sciences, Citi Trends, Cortexyme, Gogo, Intercept Pharma, iStar, Lemonade and SmileDirectClub.

My next article (see here) expanded the list to include an additional 10 stocks with short sales in excess of 25% of total shares, namely: Biofrontera, Lordstown Motors, Nikola, Ocugen, Rite Aid, Romeo Power, Shift Technologies, Vinco Ventures, Vusix and Workhorse Group.

Today's article presents the latest scorecard of the performance of the abovementioned 25 stocks in play, and those stocks having the greatest success (the greatest momentum) in the last week and their momentum since mid-November, 2021, in brackets.

• 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.
• During the month of February the "Squeezers" caused five (5) of the 25 stocks to advance in excess of 15%.
• During this first week of March four (4) of the stocks advanced in excess of 12%, namely: Arch Resources: +29.5%, Workhouse Group: +20.4%, Gogo Inc.: +15.8% and Arcimoto Inc.: +12.5%.
• During this past week a different four (4) stocks advanced in excess of 12%, namely: Bed Bath & Beyond: +24.3% (+28.7% since the end of January), Intercept Pharma: +13.3% (-3.9%), Nicola: +12.9% (+0.5%) and Beam Global: +11.8% (+36.1%).
• Since the end of January only 10 of the 25 stocks have shown any consistent momentum, namely, in descending order, (and with their performances since the game commenced on November 15, 2021, or thereabouts in brackets):
  1. Arch Resources (ARCH): +56.3% (+67.6%)
  2. Beam Global (BEEM): +36.1% (-61.6%)
  3. Gogo (GOGO): +31.7% (-2.5%)
  4. Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY): +28.7% (-16.7%)
  5. Arcimoto (FUV): +27.2% (-45.9%)
  6. Blink Charging (BLNK): +22.7% (-50.5%)
  7. Workhorse Group (WKHS): +17.6% (-56.1%)
  8. iStar (STAR):  +13.6% (-11.1%)
  9. Vusix (VUZI): +2.7% (-61.8%)
  10. Nikola (NKLA): +0.5% (-51.3%)

Conclusion

The 25 highly shorted stocks went up +0.5% last week, on average, with 13 individual stocks doing so for a score of "Shorters" 13; "Squeezers" 12 for the week. However, given the fact that ALL BUT ONE, of the 25 stocks are down (-44.5%, on average) from when they were first shorted back in mid-November 2021, it clearly shows that the "shorters" are winning the "game" in dramatic fashion.