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How liquid US stocks distribute by short interest as a percent of shares outstanding

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 2026-08-22, from What Is FINRA Short Interest? Days to Cover.

as of ranking 5×4read in context →
How liquid US stocks distribute by short interest as a percent of shares outstanding — 5 rows by 4 columns, computed from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
short_pct_buckettickerspct_of_tickersmedian_days_to_cover
Under 2%172132.37
2-5%38228.83.36
5-10%40130.24.67
10-20%27220.56.22
20%+1017.67.4
Rows × columns
5 × 4
Computed
Completeness
No missing values
Source
US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence
Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats
JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for How liquid US stocks distribute by short interest as a percent of shares outstanding, derived from the stored result.
ColumnTypeRangeNotes
short_pct_bucket text 5 distinct values (10-20%, 2-5%, 20%+…)
tickers number 101 to 401
pct_of_tickers number 7.6 to 30.2 percent
median_days_to_cover number 2.37 to 7.4

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.

the exact SQL behind every number
WITH (SELECT max(settlement_date) FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest) AS latest,
si AS
(
    SELECT ticker,
           max(short_interest) AS shares_short,
           max(avg_daily_volume) AS adv,
           max(days_to_cover) AS dtc
    FROM global_markets.stocks_short_interest
    WHERE settlement_date = latest
    GROUP BY ticker
    HAVING adv >= 1000000
),
shares AS
(
    SELECT tk AS ticker,
           argMax(basic_shares_outstanding, (filing_date, period_end)) AS shares_out
    FROM global_markets.stocks_income_statements
    ARRAY JOIN tickers AS tk
    WHERE timeframe = 'quarterly'
      AND filing_date >= today() - INTERVAL 9 MONTH
      AND basic_shares_outstanding > 0
    GROUP BY tk
    HAVING shares_out >= 10000000
),
joined AS
(
    SELECT si.ticker AS ticker,
           100.0 * si.shares_short / shares.shares_out AS short_pct,
           si.dtc AS dtc
    FROM si
    INNER JOIN shares ON si.ticker = shares.ticker
    WHERE 100.0 * si.shares_short / shares.shares_out <= 50
)
SELECT multiIf(short_pct < 2, 'Under 2%',
               short_pct < 5, '2-5%',
               short_pct < 10, '5-10%',
               short_pct < 20, '10-20%',
               '20%+') AS short_pct_bucket,
       count() AS tickers,
       round(100.0 * count() / sum(count()) OVER (), 1) AS pct_of_tickers,
       round(quantileExact(0.5)(dtc), 2) AS median_days_to_cover
FROM joined
GROUP BY short_pct_bucket
ORDER BY min(short_pct)

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