FINRA Short Interest Data, Explained

Nearly every short-interest number you have ever read traces back to FINRA, the US broker-dealer regulator, and FINRA publishes two entirely different short-selling datasets that get conflated constantly. One is the short interest file: broker-reported open short positions, compiled twice a month. The other is the daily short volume file: a byproduct of trade reporting, published every day, measuring something else. This page explains both at the source level, schedules, contents, a real print read line by line, where to look the data up yourself, and the failure modes we have caught in the files. (Short interest itself has its own explainer if the concept is new.)

The twice-monthly short interest file

Broker-dealers report their customers' and their own open short positions to FINRA as of two settlement dates each month, mid-month and month-end, and the compiled totals per security are disseminated on a published schedule. The requirement is regulation, not convention: FINRA Rule 4560 obligates member firms to report their short positions in all equity securities twice a month. That cadence is verifiable in the data:

SELECT toYear(settlement_date) AS year,
       uniqExact(settlement_date) AS settlement_dates
FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest
WHERE settlement_date >= '2018-01-01'
GROUP BY year
ORDER BY year

Every full year from 2018 through 2025 shows exactly 24 settlement dates on file; 2026 stands at 13 so far. Each record carries three fields per security: the open short position (shares short), an average-daily-volume figure, and the days-to-cover ratio built from them. Two properties matter more than anything in the file: it is a snapshot of open positions (the thing people actually mean by "short interest"), and it is slow, positions as of the settlement date, published roughly two weeks later. The lag has its own page, with the publication delays measured print by print.

The 2026 settlement calendar

"Twice a month" resolves to specific dates: the 15th of each month (moved to the preceding business day when the 15th falls on a weekend or holiday) and the last business day of the month. Here is the calendar the file has produced in 2026:

SELECT toString(settlement_date) AS settlement,
       formatDateTime(settlement_date, '%W') AS weekday,
       uniqExact(ticker) AS securities_on_file
FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest
WHERE settlement_date >= '2026-01-01'
GROUP BY settlement_date
ORDER BY settlement_date

13 settlements so far this year, from 2026-01-15 through 2026-07-15, and the weekday column shows the business-day adjustment at work (a mid-February settlement on Friday the 13th, with the 15th on a Sunday). The coverage column is worth a glance too: the file has grown from 21262 securities on the first print of the year to 22373 on the latest, every equity security with a reportable position, not just index names.

Reading a real short-interest print

Here is what the file actually says about one household name: Apple's five most recent settlement records, with the print-over-print change computed alongside:

SELECT settlement, shares_short_mn, adv_mn, days_to_cover, change_pct
FROM (
    SELECT settlement_date,
           toString(settlement_date) AS settlement,
           round(short_interest / 1e6, 1) AS shares_short_mn,
           round(avg_daily_volume / 1e6, 1) AS adv_mn,
           days_to_cover,
           round((short_interest - lagInFrame(short_interest) OVER (ORDER BY settlement_date))
                 / lagInFrame(short_interest) OVER (ORDER BY settlement_date) * 100, 1) AS change_pct
    FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest
    WHERE ticker = 'AAPL'
      AND settlement_date >= '2026-04-15' AND settlement_date <= '2026-06-30'
)
WHERE settlement_date > '2026-04-15'
ORDER BY settlement_date

Read the latest row the way a practitioner would: 140.5 million shares short as of the 2026-06-30 settlement, a -2.6% change from the prior print, against an average daily volume of 81.1 million shares, 1.73 days to cover. Across the five prints, the position built through May (up 12.3% into the 2026-05-29 settlement, the largest swing in the table), then eased on two consecutive prints.

The instructive column is days-to-cover. It printed 1.73 on the latest settlement, the lowest of the five, while the position itself only slipped -2.6%. The denominator moved instead: the average-daily-volume figure jumped from 52.3 million shares on the mid-June print to 81.1 million at month-end. Days-to-cover divides a slow-moving position by a fast-moving volume average, so a burst of trading can compress the ratio sharply with no covering at all, read all three columns, never the ratio alone.

The daily short volume file, the one that isn't short interest

Every day, FINRA publishes per-ticker "short volume": the portion of that day's reported trades where the sell side was marked short. It is DAILY and fresh, and it is a flow, not a position. Market makers short constantly as routine inventory management, so marked-short percentages run high, often well over a third to more than half of the file's volume, for utterly ordinary stocks on utterly ordinary days. That claim deserves a receipt, so here are five household names on July 10, 2026, an unremarkable Friday with a complete file:

WITH covered AS (
    SELECT ticker,
           max(short_volume) AS short_vol,
           max(total_volume) AS covered_vol
    FROM global_markets.stocks_short_volume
    WHERE date = '2026-07-10'
      AND ticker IN ('AAPL', 'MSFT', 'NVDA', 'TSLA', 'KO')
    GROUP BY ticker
),
tape AS (
    SELECT ticker, sum(volume) AS tape_vol
    FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
    WHERE ticker IN ('AAPL', 'MSFT', 'NVDA', 'TSLA', 'KO')
      AND window_start >= toDateTime('2026-07-10 04:00:00', 'America/New_York')
      AND window_start < toDateTime('2026-07-10 20:00:00', 'America/New_York')
    GROUP BY ticker
)
SELECT covered.ticker AS ticker,
       round(covered.short_vol / 1e6, 1) AS marked_short_mn,
       round(covered.covered_vol / 1e6, 1) AS file_total_mn,
       round(covered.short_vol / covered.covered_vol * 100, 1) AS pct_marked_short,
       round(tape.tape_vol / 1e6, 1) AS consolidated_tape_mn,
       round(covered.covered_vol / tape.tape_vol * 100, 1) AS file_share_of_tape_pct
FROM covered
JOIN tape ON covered.ticker = tape.ticker
ORDER BY indexOf(['AAPL', 'MSFT', 'NVDA', 'TSLA', 'KO'], covered.ticker)

The five ranged from 38.8% marked short (Microsoft) to 57% (Coca-Cola), and Coca-Cola, about as far from a short-seller battleground as the market offers, printed the highest share of the group. Nothing notable happened in these names that day, this is the file's ordinary state. Note the denominator, too: the file's total-volume column counts only the reported volume the dataset covers, not the whole market. Apple's 11.3 million file-total shares compare with 27.9 million on the consolidated tape that day, the file saw 40.5% of Apple's tape, and the other four names ran in the same neighborhood. Treating the daily file as fast short interest is the single most common short-data mistake on the internet; the two-datasets comparison takes it apart with a worked example.

One vocabulary note. The file's "exempt" columns count short-exempt volume, trades executed under an exception to SEC Regulation SHO, the rule governing how short sales may be executed (the locate requirement and the circuit-breaker price test). Reg SHO is a separate regime from position reporting, and it produces its own daily artifact: the threshold list of securities with persistent settlement fails. FINRA hosts the daily short-volume files on its Reg SHO data pages, which does the two-datasets confusion no favors.

How far back does the data go?

Two different answers for the two files, worth pinning down before you trend anything:

SELECT toString(min(settlement_date)) AS settlement_file_start,
       uniqExact(settlement_date) AS settlement_prints,
       (SELECT toString(min(date)) FROM global_markets.stocks_short_volume) AS daily_file_start,
       (SELECT uniqExact(date) FROM global_markets.stocks_short_volume) AS daily_files
FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest

In this warehouse the settlement file reaches back to 2017-12-29, 206 settlement prints and counting, while the daily short-volume history starts 2024-02-06 (618 trading days on file). FINRA's own archives extend further back; the depths above are what every panel on this site draws on.

The failure modes, receipts from our own archive

Reading a data source honestly means knowing how it breaks. In the last month our pipeline has caught the daily short-volume file arriving truncated twice, an alphabetical fragment of the usual ticker universe:

SELECT toString(date) AS d,
       uniqExact(ticker) AS tickers_on_file
FROM global_markets.stocks_short_volume
WHERE date IN ('2026-06-26', '2026-06-29', '2026-06-30', '2026-07-06', '2026-07-07', '2026-07-08')
GROUP BY date
ORDER BY date

June 29's file carried 5489 tickers against ~15052 on a normal day, and July 7's carried 4333, both alphabetical truncations, both on newsworthy sessions, both flagged in our recaps when they happened. The practical rule: before quoting any single day's short volume for any ticker, check whether that day's file is complete.

The twice-monthly file has its own failure mode: after-the-fact revision. Reporting firms can correct a submission, and a settlement print can change after first publication. Our warehouse keeps the latest value for each print, a correction overwrites the original row, which is why every page here re-runs its queries at regeneration: a revised print updates every number that cited it instead of fossilizing.

How to look up short interest yourself

You do not need a paid product to see any of this, the primary sources are public:

• FINRA publishes both datasets on its website: consolidated equity short interest (searchable per security and downloadable per settlement date under FINRA Data) and the Daily Short Sale Volume files, posted each evening on its Reg SHO data pages.
• The exchanges, Nasdaq's website offers a per-ticker short interest lookup with print-by-print history for its listed companies, and NYSE-listed totals flow through the same FINRA consolidation.
• Broker platforms and screeners, the "short interest" and "short % of float" fields most platforms display are repackaged versions of the same prints, sometimes with estimates interpolated between settlements. A number that looks stale may simply carry a settlement date two weeks old by design.

Which file should you use for what?

• "How shorted is this stock?", the twice-monthly short interest file, read with its date. The most-shorted leaderboards are built from its latest print.
• "Are shorts pressing today?", nothing public answers this cleanly. The daily file is the closest artifact and it mostly measures market-making plumbing; use it for patterns across days, never as a same-day position estimate.
• "When does new data arrive?", settlements twice monthly on the published calendar above; daily files each evening for the prior session.

FINRA short interest FAQ

How often does FINRA publish short interest?

Open short positions are reported under FINRA Rule 4560 as of two settlement dates per month, the 15th (or the preceding business day) and the month's last business day, twenty-four per year, and published roughly two weeks after each settlement. The daily short volume file is a different dataset, published every trading day.

Where can I look up short interest for a specific stock?

FINRA's website publishes the consolidated short interest data per security, Nasdaq's site offers a per-ticker lookup with print history, and most broker platforms surface the latest print as "short interest" or "short % of float." Whatever the source, check the settlement date attached to the number, every one of them traces to the same twice-monthly file.

Is FINRA short interest data free?

Yes, FINRA and the exchanges disseminate both files publicly. Most paid "short interest" products are repackaging (or estimating between) these same prints.

How far back does short-interest data go?

This site's warehouse holds every settlement print since 2017-12-29, 206 of them, and daily short-volume files since 2024-02-06. FINRA's own archives reach back further still.

Why does short volume show 50% short when short interest is tiny?

The daily file marks the sell side of reported trades, and market makers sell short constantly as inventory plumbing, it is a flow statistic dominated by intermediation, not a position statistic. On an ordinary Friday, Coca-Cola printed 57% of its reported volume marked short. The two numbers measure different things and routinely diverge by an order of magnitude.

Is short interest the same as the Reg SHO threshold list?

No. Short interest is a twice-monthly count of open short positions reported under FINRA Rule 4560. The Reg SHO threshold list is a daily list of securities with persistent failures to deliver at settlement, produced under an SEC rule about short-sale execution. A stock can be heavily shorted and never appear on the threshold list.

Can FINRA short interest data be wrong?

It can be late, truncated, or revised, all documented above from our own archive. Treat every print as "as reported, as of its date," and prefer sources that show which file and date a number came from.

Every panel is a stored, versioned query over the files themselves, expand the SQL, or audit any date's coverage on the Strasmore terminal.