Days to cover by liquidity band: median stays low, the extremes live in thin names
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 2026-09-26, from Highest Days to Cover Stocks Right Now.
| liquidity_band | names | median_dtc | max_dtc |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Very liquid (20M+ ADV) | 151 | 1.1 | 7.2 |
| 2 Liquid (5-20M ADV) | 541 | 2.5 | 22.1 |
| 3 Moderate (1-5M ADV) | 1949 | 3.4 | 137.6 |
| 4 Thin (200k-1M ADV) | 3018 | 2.7 | 133 |
| 5 Very thin (<200k ADV) | 16933 | 2.6 | 1000 |
- Rows × columns
- 5 × 4
- 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
liquidity_band |
text | 5 distinct values | |
names |
number | 151 to 16,933 | |
median_dtc |
number | 1.1 to 3.4 | |
max_dtc |
number | 7.2 to 1,000 |
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.
SELECT multiIf(avg_daily_volume >= 2e7, '1 Very liquid (20M+ ADV)',
avg_daily_volume >= 5e6, '2 Liquid (5-20M ADV)',
avg_daily_volume >= 1e6, '3 Moderate (1-5M ADV)',
avg_daily_volume >= 2e5, '4 Thin (200k-1M ADV)',
'5 Very thin (<200k ADV)') AS liquidity_band,
count() AS names,
round(quantileDeterministic(0.5)(days_to_cover, cityHash64(ticker)), 1) AS median_dtc,
round(max(days_to_cover), 1) AS max_dtc
FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest
WHERE settlement_date = (SELECT max(settlement_date) FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest)
AND days_to_cover > 0
AND ticker NOT IN ('SPCX')
GROUP BY liquidity_band
ORDER BY liquidity_band
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