Short Positions in German Stocks: Bundesanzeiger

To find short positions in German stocks, search the Bundesanzeiger's net short position register (Netto-Leerverkaufspositionen), where every holder of a published short position of 0.5% or more of a company's issued shares is listed by name, alongside the issuer, the ISIN (the twelve-character international securities identification number), the percentage and the position date. The register exists under the EU Short Selling Regulation and shows individual holders, which US short interest never does. It also omits every position below 0.5%, which makes the totals quoted in German media a floor rather than the whole short book.

What the EU Short Selling Regulation requires

The rules come from Regulation (EU) No 236/2012, usually called the SSR, in force across the EU since November 2012. It rests on the idea of a net short position: a holder's short exposure to a company's shares, including exposure built through derivatives such as options or swaps, minus any long exposure to the same shares, expressed as a percentage of the company's issued share capital. ESMA, the EU markets regulator, summarises the two thresholds on its short selling page:

"significant net short positions (NSPs) in shares must be reported to the relevant competent authorities (when they reach 0.1% of the issued share capital and every 0.1% above that) and disclosed to the public (when they reach 0.5% of the issued share capital and every 0.1% above that)"

There are two tiers. At 0.1%, the holder tells the regulator privately. At 0.5%, the position becomes public, and it is published again at each 0.1% step as it grows or shrinks. The rule also applies on the way down: when a published position falls below a threshold, that crossing is published too, which is why the register sometimes shows a final entry of 0.49% before a holder drops off the current list. The private tier was 0.2% when the SSR took effect; ESMA cut it to 0.1% as a temporary measure on 16 March 2020, and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/27 made 0.1% permanent from 31 January 2022.

Timing is fixed in Article 9 of the SSR. The position is measured at midnight at the end of the trading day, and the notification or disclosure must be made "not later than at 15.30 on the following trading day". BaFin, Germany's financial supervisor, states the same deadline in its own guidance (as of September 2026): by 3.30 p.m. German time on the following trading day, with publication in the Bundesanzeiger by the same time where required. A position built on Monday is public by Tuesday afternoon.

How to search the Bundesanzeiger net short position register

BaFin receives the notice, but the public entries live in the Bundesanzeiger, Germany's Federal Gazette, at bundesanzeiger.de/pub/en/nlp. The holder publishes the entry itself through the Bundesanzeiger's publication platform once BaFin has been notified. Use is free and needs no account. The search page (English labels as of September 2026) works like this:

1. Search by issuer. Type the company name into the Issuer field, or paste the ISIN into the ISIN field when a group has several listed share classes or a name matches more than one entity. German ISINs begin with DE.
2. Filter by position size. The Position range fields take a from and to percentage. Entering 1.00 in the from field hides every holder below 1% and leaves only the largest published shorts. A Date range filter sits beside it.
3. Switch on historical entries. By default the register shows only current positions. Tick "Also find historicised data" to include superseded entries, which lets you trace one holder's path through the thresholds, for example 0.51%, then 0.72%, then 0.81%, then 0.49%. Each issuer row also carries a History link.
4. Export. The result set downloads as a CSV file for sorting in a spreadsheet.

The results table has five columns: Position owner, Issuer, ISIN, Position (the percentage) and Date. The date is the position date, in the regulation's words the day the position was "created, changed or ceased to be held", not the day the entry went live; under the Article 9 schedule the two are usually one trading day apart. A search by Position owner also works, listing every German issuer in which a given manager currently holds a published short.

Why the German Short-Quote is a floor, not the total

German financial media and portals often quote a Short-Quote (also Leerverkaufsquote) for a stock, a single percentage described as the share of the company sold short. That figure is the sum of the currently published positions in the register. If four holders publish 0.6%, 0.8%, 1.1% and 2.0%, the Short-Quote reads 4.5%.

SELECT
    position_owner,
    net_short_pct
FROM
(
    SELECT 'Holder A' AS position_owner, 0.6 AS net_short_pct, 1 AS sort_key
    UNION ALL SELECT 'Holder B', 0.8, 2
    UNION ALL SELECT 'Holder C', 1.1, 3
    UNION ALL SELECT 'Holder D', 2.0, 4
    UNION ALL SELECT 'Short-Quote (sum)', round(0.6 + 0.8 + 1.1 + 2.0, 2), 5
)
ORDER BY sort_key

The sum leaves out several layers. Every holder between 0.1% and 0.49% is known to BaFin but never to the public. Every holder below 0.1% is known only to its own broker. Each published number is already a net figure: a fund short 1.2% of a company while holding 0.5% long reports 0.7%. And positions held in a market-making capacity can be exempt from disclosure altogether under Article 17 of the SSR. The Short-Quote is the visible part of the short book, and it can only understate the real total. A Short-Quote of zero means no single holder is at 0.5% or above; it does not mean nobody is short.

How this differs from US short interest

US short interest answers a different question. Broker-dealers report the total number of shares sold short in every listed stock to FINRA twice a month, on the mid-month and month-end settlement dates, and FINRA and the exchanges publish the totals roughly a week to ten days later. The figure covers every short seller regardless of size and carries no holder names. Our guide to what short interest is explains how it is read as a percentage of float and as days to cover, and when short interest is released covers the twice-monthly calendar. The FINRA short interest data page walks through the reporting mechanics.

Side by side: the US system tells you how much is short but not who; the German register tells you who is short (above 0.5%) but not how much in total. Neither contains the other. A German stock with a 3% Short-Quote may have far more than 3% of its shares short once sub-threshold holders are counted, while a US stock with 20% short interest says nothing about whether one fund or two hundred accounts hold it. Screens such as our most shorted stocks list and short squeeze candidates rest on US exchange totals and have no German equivalent built on register data.

Other EU stocks and the UK

Every EU member state runs its own counterpart to the Bundesanzeiger register, since the SSR requires each national authority to post disclosures on "a central website operated or supervised by the relevant competent authority". ESMA keeps the list of those sites on the short selling page linked above, one entry per country, which is the quickest route to the register for a French or Italian issuer.

The UK has left the SSR model. From 13 July 2026 the FCA publishes an Aggregate Net Short Positions (ANSP) report each working day from 12:00, built from the individual positions reported to it at or above 0.2%. In the FCA's words, "Individual positions are anonymised and are not disclosed", and the report runs on a T+2 basis. The UK report is daily but anonymous, where the German register is continuous and named.

Leerverkaufsverbot: a short history of German bans

A Leerverkaufsverbot is a short-selling ban, and Germany has reached for one before. On 18 May 2010 BaFin announced general administrative acts, effective the next day, prohibiting naked short sales (sales of shares the seller has neither borrowed nor arranged to borrow) in ten German financial stocks, together with naked credit default swaps on euro-area sovereign debt, with the measures set to run to 31 March 2011. In July 2010 the Bundestag passed the Gesetz zur Vorbeugung gegen missbräuchliche Wertpapier- und Derivategeschäfte, extending the naked-short ban to all shares traded on a regulated market of a German exchange; the EU-wide SSR, with its own restriction on uncovered short sales, replaced the national rule from November 2012. Spring 2020 played out differently: the regulators of Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy and Spain announced short-position bans on 17 and 18 March 2020 and lifted them together at the end of 18 May 2020, while BaFin imposed no ban and ESMA instead lowered the notification threshold to 0.1%. ESMA's 2024 working paper "Market impacts of the 2020 short selling bans" documents that episode.

FAQ

Where can I see who is shorting a German stock?

In the Bundesanzeiger's net short position register at bundesanzeiger.de/pub/en/nlp. Search by issuer name or ISIN and the table lists every holder with a published position of 0.5% or more of the company's issued share capital, with the percentage and the position date. Access is free.

What does the percentage in the Bundesanzeiger register mean?

It is one holder's net short position in that issuer, short exposure minus long exposure, as a percentage of the company's issued shares, measured at midnight on the date shown. Entries appear at 0.5% and at every 0.1% step above, and a final entry is published when the position drops back below a threshold.

Is the German Short-Quote the same as US short interest?

No. The Short-Quote is the sum of published positions at or above 0.5%, which excludes smaller holders and understates the true total. US short interest is an exchange-reported total of all shares sold short, published twice a month, with no holder names.

How quickly does a new short position appear in the register?

Under Article 9 of the EU Short Selling Regulation the holder must publish by 15:30 on the trading day after the position was created or changed, and BaFin's guidance gives the same 3.30 p.m. German time deadline. A position measured at midnight on Monday is public by Tuesday afternoon.

The US half of this comparison, exchange short interest and daily short volume for any ticker, is a plain-English question away on the Strasmore terminal.