Tuesday is first day that our data shows the short selling trading for Friday 16th January, the day when the UK lifted the ban on the short selling of financial stocks.
We can reveal that there was little movement on the short selling front, with the short position in Barclays (BARC) increasing from 3.14% of its shares outstanding on loan (%SOOL) to 3.2%. Utilisation, or the percentage of the available supply out on loan to short investors, however, did increase from 17% to 19.5% in Friday trading. Interestingly, BARC saw the volume of its shares traded at 140m, compared to last week's average of 60m and and the six-month average of approximately 90m. Please see below the chart for BARC's Utilisation.
The short position of HSBC (HSBA) also increased, buy only minimally, from 1.53% to 1.58%, as did Lloyds TSB (LLOY), from 1.19% to 1.27%. Aviva (AV.) and Prudential (PRU) also saw a minimum rise in their short positions, from 0.16% to 0.2% and 0.18% to 0.23% respectively.
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