Research · Living data · Updated 2026-07-17
Heavily shorted names, days-to-cover, and the activist short reports behind the theses — a living watchlist.
A short squeeze happens when a rising price forces short sellers to buy back, accelerating the move. Identifying candidates before that reflexive loop starts is the whole game. NextTrack combines market-wide short interest and days-to-cover with 253 activist short-seller research reports, linking each short thesis back to the report that made it. The report count refreshes on every rebuild.
| Metric | Live figure |
|---|---|
| NextTrack tracks | 253 short-seller reports |
| Last updated | 2026-07-17 |
Two conditions define a candidate. First, **high short interest relative to float** — a lot of the tradeable supply is sold short. Second, **high days-to-cover** — short interest divided by average daily volume, which measures how many days of normal trading it would take shorts to buy back. When both are elevated, a price rise can force a scramble to cover, and thin liquidity turns that scramble into a squeeze.
Neither number is a signal on its own. A crowded short with deep liquidity can be covered calmly; a smaller short into a thin, catalyst-driven name is far more combustible.
Not every heavily shorted stock deserves to squeeze. Sometimes the shorts are right. That's why NextTrack aggregates 253 reports from activist short desks — Bear Cave, Grizzly, Fuzzy Panda and others — and links each to the named ticker. Reading the actual thesis tells you whether the short case is a fundamental fraud allegation (which a squeeze doesn't refute) or a valuation call (which a squeeze can overrun).
Short interest and days-to-cover come from FINRA and exchange short-interest reporting. Short-seller reports are ingested from the public feeds of activist short desks and matched to a ticker where one is named. The full short tracker, with the squeeze-candidate screen and every linked report, is in the app. For the smart-money counterpoint, see [top 13F institutional ownership changes](/research/13f-institutional-ownership).
Short interest dataset & methodology · Activist investor campaigns 2026 · Top 13F institutional ownership