At the end of the settlement date of December 15, 2017, short interest in 2,344 Nasdaq Global Market SM securities totaled 7,459,908,298 shares compared with 7,455,601,576 shares in 2,348 Global Market issues reported for the prior settlement date of November 30, 2017. The mid-December short interest represents 4.37 days average daily Nasdaq Global Market share volume for the reporting period, compared with 4.52 days for the prior reporting period.
Short interest in 859 securities on The Nasdaq Capital MarketSM totaled 851,718,169 shares at the end of the settlement date of December 15, 2017 compared with 846,516,393 shares in 861 securities for the previous reporting period. This represents 2.84 days average daily volume, compared with the previous reporting period’s figure of 2.87.
In summary, short interest in all 3,203 Nasdaq® securities totaled 8,311,626,467 shares at the December 15, 2017 settlement date, compared with 3,209 issues and 8,302,117,969 shares at the end of the previous reporting period. This is 4.14 days average daily volume, compared with an average of 4.27 days for the previous reporting period.
The open short interest positions reported for each Nasdaq security reflect the total number of shares sold short by all broker/dealers regardless of their exchange affiliations. A short sale is generally understood to mean the sale of a security that the seller does not own or any sale that is consummated by the delivery of a security borrowed by or for the account of the seller.