Daily Options Report

So who was Chasing Benjamin in yesterday's excitement? Seems like the gang that was short and losing their Benjamin's. This chart from Ryan Renicker of Newedge, and his desciption.

Calculated the average intraday % return for 2 categories within the S&P 500.  First category - "High Shorts" include stocks that have short interest ratios falling within the top 20 percentile of short interest ratios for all constituents of the S&P 500, has had increasing short interest during the past month and also fall within the top 20 percentile of according to short interest as a % of float shares outstanding.

Second category-"Low Shorts" include stocks having short interest ratios falling in the bottom 20 percentile of short interest ratios for the S&P 500, had declining short interest during the past month and also fell within the bottom 20 percentile for short interest as % of float shares outstanding.

Then, compared the average returns for each of these 2 categories across sectors to minimize sector-specific factors impacting intraday returns.

Infer that short covering likely to be occurring when the average return for the day within a particular sector is somewhat higher for the "High Shorts" category than the average return for the same sector falling within the "Low Shorts" category.

Does not take into account several other possible factors, but generally tends to track what we are seeing from the flow.....

Good thing we backed off from our plans to send all shorts to Gitmo, we'd be like 2000 points lower now without them, lol. Which kind of reminds me, whatever happened to the whole War Against the Shorts and the Minus Tick Selling That Destroyed America?

I guess a big rally despite no rule changes might have soothed that issue a bit, though I have no doubt it would crop back up in the next decline.