At the end of the settlement date of August 15, 2012, short interest in 2,203 NASDAQ Global MarketSM securities totaled 7,226,611,409 shares compared with 7,315,848,792 shares in 2,206 Global Market issues reported for the prior settlement date of July 31, 2012. The mid-August short interest represents 4.16 days average daily NASDAQ Global Market share volume for the reporting period, compared with 4.65 days for the prior reporting period.
Short interest in 501 securities on The NASDAQ Capital MarketSM totaled 383,324,900 shares at the end of the settlement date of August 15, 2012 compared with 384,455,995 shares in 506 securities for the previous reporting period. This represents 6.07 days average daily volume, compared with the previous reporting period's figure of 5.16.
In summary, short interest in all 2,704 NASDAQ® securities totaled 7,609,936,309 shares at the August 15, 2012 settlement date, compared with 2,712 issues and 7,700,304,787 shares at the end of the previous reporting period. This is 4.22 days average daily volume, compared with an average of 4.67 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://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/short-interest.aspx or http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/asp/short_interest.asp.