Amazon dethrones Tesla as the stock short sellers hate the most
Amazon's stock is now more heavily bet against than Tesla's, according to data from S3 Partners.
The e-commerce giant dethroned Elon Musk's car company Thursday as the most heavily shorted stock as shares climbed above $2,000 for the first time.
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Less than one week after Tesla CEO Elon Musk ended his bid to take the electric-car company private, Amazon has passed it as the most-shorted US stock.
Short interest in Amazon climbed to $9.97 billion on Friday, according to data from S3 partners, passing the $9.83 billion in bets against Tesla’s stock, which for months has been the most-shorted name in the market.
"While there was some short covering the week after the tweet, there has still not been any significant net Tesla short covering on the Street," Ihor Dusaniwsky, head of research at financial-analytics firm S3 Partners, said in a note to clients, per Reuters.
"Any traders who have closed down their positions to realize some profits have been replaced by new ones looking for continued price weakness."
Short interest is calculated as a function of the number of shares sold short and the stock’s price. Tesla on Thursday briefly dipped below $300 — 22% off it's high of $389 during Musk's 16-day bid to take his company private — while Amazon climbed above $2,000 for the first time in its race to a $1 trillion market cap.
Still, depending on where Tesla’s stock goes from the $300 level, there's room for short interest to climb, Dusaniwsky said.
"A $300 Tesla price may be a signal of increased short selling since when Tesla’s stock price dipped below $300 per share in March, shares shorted climbed from 30.0 million to 41.6 million in just over two months," he told Reuters.
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