Signs of extreme bullishness abound, whether in the plummeting VIX, net long speculative interest in the Nasdaq, put call ratios, bullish percentage indices, new highs, Dow 11000 hoopla, the Newsweek cover story on the Comeback Country, the $SLIX indicator, they almost got Art Cashin to capitulate on CNBC et. al. Someday, maybe soon, this will reverse direction, but who knows if there will be any bears left to see it happen. One measure of declining bearishness is seen in short interest. Tabulated below is some basic information from shortsqueeze.com relative to popular ETFs and a couple glamor stocks. The upshot — the wall of worry represented by shorts is a smoldering pile. To be short has been to be annihilated. It is within living memory when all these values were much higher, and ETFs were often hard to borrow. Will this evacuation of standing shorts accelerate the speed of the decline should it ever happen? Stands to reason, but reason is not leading the charge right now…
| Ticker | Sector/Type | Short Int Ratio | Short % Decrease |
| XLP | Consumer Staples | 3.8 | -20.9 |
| QQQQ | Nasdaq | 1.4 | -18.0 |
| IYR | REITs | 5.2 | -16.4 |
| SMH | Semiconductors | 2.3 | -15.6 |
| IWM | Russell 3000 | 3.4 | -12.7 |
| XLY | Consumer Discretionary | 3.2 | -12.3 |
| GDX | Gold & Silver Miners | 1.1 | -12.2 |
| XRT | Retail | 5.8 | -11.3 |
| XLF | Financials | 1.5 | -10.2 |
| SPY | S&P 500 | 1.3 | -7.6 |
| XLB | Materials | 2.0 | -7.0 |
| GLD | Gold | 1.0 | -3.1 |
| XLE | Energy | 1.7 | -1.9 |
| IBB | Biotech | 9.5 | 1.1 |
| EFA | MSCI EAFE | 2.3 | 1.4 |
| IWN | Russell 3000 Value | 2.3 | 3.2 |
| AAPL | Tech | 0.5 | -35.2 |
| GOOG | Tech | 0.9 | -27.3 |
| FCX | Copper | 2.0 | -2.8 |
| BAC | Financials | 0.6 | -11.9 |
