At the end of the settlement date of May 31, 2011, short interest in 2,319 NASDAQ Global MarketSM securities totaled 6,876,160,355 shares compared with 6,604,611,145 shares in 2,325 Global Market issues reported for the prior settlement date of May 13, 2011. The end-of-May short interest represents 3.62 days average daily NASDAQ Global Market share volume for the reporting period, compared with 3.23 days for the prior reporting period.
Short interest in 493 securities on The NASDAQ Capital MarketSM totaled 372,954,043 shares at the end of the settlement date of May 31, 2011 compared with 405,617,864 shares in 490 securities for the previous reporting period. This represents 4.34 days average daily volume, compared with the previous reporting period's figure of 4.83.
In summary, short interest in all 2,812 NASDAQ® securities totaled 7,249,114,398 shares at the May 31, 2011 settlement date, compared with 2,815 issues and 7,010,229,009 shares at the end of the previous reporting period. This is 3.65 days average daily volume, compared with an average of 3.29 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.
For more information on NASDAQ Short interest positions, including publication dates, visit http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/MasterDataEntry.asp?page=ShortInterest or http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/asp/short_interest.asp.
