At the end of the settlement date of January 13, 2012, short interest in 2,267 NASDAQ Global MarketSM securities totaled 6,699,994,804 shares compared with 6,433,379,539 shares in 2,271 Global Market issues reported for the prior settlement date of December 30, 2011. The mid-January short interest represents 5.31 days average daily NASDAQ Global Market share volume for the reporting period, compared with 3.60 days for the prior reporting period.
Short interest in 480 securities on The NASDAQ Capital MarketSM totaled 356,498,452 shares at the end of the settlement date of January 13, 2012 compared with 360,791,843 shares in 481 securities for the previous reporting period. This represents 7.38 days average daily volume, compared with the previous reporting period's figure of 6.39.
In summary, short interest in all 2,747 NASDAQ® securities totaled 7,056,493,256 shares at the January 13, 2012 settlement date, compared with 2,752 issues and 6,794,171,382 shares at the end of the previous reporting period. This is 5.39 days average daily volume, compared with an average of 3.68 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.