Shorting stocks?

Question

Where on Yahoo Finance or MSN Money or elsewhere can I learn if a stock is being shorted on a large scale?

Answer 1

at Scottrade for example, you can check for open short interest to see the volumn of people interested in shorting the stock.

Answer 2

The number of shares short is reported in the "key statistics" page for a stock. For example, the page for GE at

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GE

under "Share Statistics" you will see

"Shares Short (as of 12-May-08): 57.72M".

You can then compare that number with the number of shares outstanding and/or the average volume to determine if it is shorted "on a large scale."

Unfortunately the information on short shares is only updated monthly.