Weekly Reports | Mar 04 2021
See Guide further below (for readers with full access).
Summary:
Week ending February 25, 2021.
After a choppy week of vaccine rallies and bond-rate-scare falls, the ASX200 ended last week with a rally and immediately followed that up with another big fall. The choppiness has continued this week.
Activity on the short-side nevertheless remains as benign as it has been all year, with the earnings result season just past leaving little of a mark. The same names remain towards the top end of the table.
A stock that’s been under pressure for a while now, both before and after its result release, is telco networks operator Service Stream ((SSM)). The market has been a lot harder on the company than the brokers who cover it. Last week Service Stream shorts rose to 8.3% from 7.4%.
Our story on the company might shine more light on some of the issues:
https://www.fnarena.com/index.php/2021/03/03/service-stream-margin-pressure-versus-nbn-upside/
Otherwise, the point of interest last week was a handful of stocks sneaking back into the bottom of the table after varying degrees of absence. Temple & Webster ((TPW)), Zip Co ((Z1P)), PolyNovo ((PNV)) and, blow me down, JB Hi-Fi ((JBH)).
While the likes of Zip were only recently among the 5%-plus shorted cohort, we thought we’d seen the back of shorting favourite JB Hi-Fi.
For years shorters had loaded up on this stock and for years they’d be blown out of the water by yet another forecast-beating earnings result. Perhaps now they’re backing the company as having seen its covid-driven rally and the only way from here is down.
Good luck.
No Movers & Shakers this week.
Weekly short positions as a percentage of market cap:
10%+
TGR 13.0
WEB 12.1
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