Short % of Float
Bitcoin: 0.2%
Altria: 0.70%
Apple: 1.10%
Citigroup: 1.10%
Kraft Foods: 1.60%
Freeport-McMoRan: 5.30%
AT&T: 6.20%
Most informative post I've read on Bitcointalk in ages. I had no idea so many people were shorting Apple! Where did you get this info?
Yeah I was surprised by this, as well. I think people may be using a relatively low margin. I suspect AAPL to be quite overvalued for some time, already. Their rise just doesn't seem reasonable, especially concerning their quality apparently declining over the last couple of years.
Sorry for ignoring the questions about my source. I don't check these threads often.
I get this data from the "Key Statistics" in a Yahoo Finance quote:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL+Key+StatisticsLots of information can be gathered there. You would be wise to check the debt amounts and return on assets amongst other things before investing in any stock.
As far as people saying that Apple is heavily shorted, if you look at the info provided, you'll see that Apple is actually not shorted very much. 1.1% is in line, or below what you would expect from a stock. Freeport-McMoRan on the other hand, is being heavily shorted as sellers take advantage of falling crude prices. Altria has a ridiculously low short % at 0.7% and Bitcoin's short % by comparison to stocks is outrageously low. That was the point of my post. I think we could see the short float go up by as much as 10x before it gets to point when it becomes dangerous. I wouldn't think we'd see a true to the moon short squeeze unless we had a float of around 5%, or about 25x what it is currently... However, this is assuming that bitfinex is the only place to short Bitcoin. I suspect there are many other sites offering this as well, so it is quite possible the true Bitcoin short % of the float could be much higher, especially if you take into account the "lost bitcoins" that surely exist in high numbers. Most regular people I send BTC to end up saying they deleted their wallet after not wanting to use Bitcoin anymore. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "it was only a couple dollars" as the reason why they didn't bother doing anything with the BTC before abandoning it.
That being said, Bitcoin is a little different, much more rare, harder to track, & less shorted due to it's nature. In comparison to stocks, we have a long way to go if these numbers are accurate before a short squeeze is even a thought. In comparison to other digital currencies
who knows. Time will tell the story.
TL;DR
Only god knows how many BTC are truly in circulation or how many different sites allow shorting them, but a good guess is that short sellers aren't in the danger zone yet.