How crowded is the short side? Days to cover across the whole reporting universe
Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-10-05, from Can You Opt Out of Share Lending?.
| days_to_cover_bucket | tickers | share_of_names_pct |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 days | 2425 | 42.2 |
| 2 to 3 days | 519 | 9 |
| 3 to 5 days | 1100 | 19.1 |
| 5 to 10 days | 1246 | 21.7 |
| 10 days or more | 461 | 8 |
- Rows × columns
- 5 × 3
- Computed
- Completeness
- No missing values
- Source
- US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
- Licence
- Strasmore terms · free, no signup
What each column holds
| Column | Type | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
days_to_cover_bucket |
text | 5 distinct values | |
tickers |
number | 461 to 2,425 | |
share_of_names_pct |
number | 8 to 42.2 | percent |
Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.
Run it yourself
This is the exact query behind the result above. Change a ticker, a date or a column and run it against the warehouse — no account, no key. The no-signup tier is smaller than the one this page was computed on; a query that reaches past it comes back saying which plan runs it.
WITH latest AS
(
SELECT
ticker,
argMax(days_to_cover, settlement_date) AS dtc,
argMax(avg_daily_volume, settlement_date) AS adv
FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest
WHERE settlement_date >= today() - 60
AND ticker NOT IN ('SPCX')
GROUP BY ticker
HAVING adv > 200000
)
SELECT
multiIf(dtc < 1, 'under 1 day',
dtc < 2, '1 to 2 days',
dtc < 3, '2 to 3 days',
dtc < 5, '3 to 5 days',
dtc < 10, '5 to 10 days',
'10 days or more') AS days_to_cover_bucket,
count() AS tickers,
round(100 * count() / (SELECT count() FROM latest), 1) AS share_of_names_pct
FROM latest
GROUP BY days_to_cover_bucket
ORDER BY min(dtc)
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