Institutional ownership & short interest

C

croker

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I have a few questions about institutional ownership and short interest as it applies to stocks. Maybe some people here have good knowledge about this..
1. Is it good for the stock if it has a high percentage of institutions owning it? Does it matter? (I've seen some well known good performing stocks with ~50% and less well known stocks with >90%)

2. What is a high percentage of short interest in a stock? (I've seen 3% for an average performing stock and >10% for some strong momentum stocks) If the stock is in a nice uptrend and has large short interest, this is good for a buy right? If it is in a downtrend and has large short interest, its good to short, generally?
Is there anywhere i can get a chart of the short interest to see it increasing/decreasing?
 
2. What is a high percentage of short interest in a stock? (I've seen 3% for an average performing stock and >10% for some strong momentum stocks) If the stock is in a nice uptrend and has large short interest, this is good for a buy right? If it is in a downtrend and has large short interest, its good to short, generally?
Is there anywhere i can get a chart of the short interest to see it increasing/decreasing?

Short sellers have to eventually buy back the shares they shorted. As a result, any heavily shorted stock - whether in an uptrend or a downtrend - will be prone to sudden upsurges in price if a relatively bullish event causes shorts to start covering their positions (a so-called short squeeze). That said, I'd much prefer to be long an uptrending stock with high short interest than on a downtrending one. Some people bottom-fish on the basis of a potential short squeeze but that's high-risk stuff.

Don't have stats on the average short interest for stocks but anything above 10% is certainly very high. For large cap stocks with a large float, the short interest is likely to be minor.

I'm not aware of any charts that will show the changing ratios. The data is reported once a month, some sites will also give the prior month's results.

Below link contains some further thoughts on the subject.

[broken link removed]
 
Thanks for that.
It's making sense to me now cos yesterday on a not-so-good day for the market i was seeing some momentum stocks with over 15% short interest getting a good pop. I suppose the momentum stocks are a good target for the short sellers because they often look over extended.
 
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