According to a report by securities lending data firm Hazeltree, ExxonMobil replaced Tesla last month as the large-cap stock with the most short positions in the S&P 500 index.
Prior to this, Elon Musk's Tesla had been at the top of the short selling chart for four consecutive months.
When investors short a stock, they bet that the company's stock price will fall. Short sellers seek profits by predicting stock declines. They borrow stocks and sell them to buyers willing to pay the market price. When the stock price drops, short sellers buy back the stock for less money, taking the difference into their pockets.
HazelTree ranks short bets with a Crowdedness Score of 1 to 99, with 99 representing the securities with the highest percentage of short positions in the fund. The company collects data on 12000 global stocks and over 700 funds.
Among the large-cap stocks, ExxonMobil and Tesla are at the top of the short selling list with 99 and 97 points respectively, followed by Apple (94 points), Chartered Communications Company (91 points), Broadcom (91 points), Rivian (86 points), Bank of America (83 points), SNAP (83 points), Ford (78 points), and Airbnb (78 points).
The three companies with the most short positions in mid cap stocks are financial technology company SOFI (99 points), American Airlines (92 points), and electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid (92 points).
Since the beginning of this year, the stock price of ExxonMobil has fallen by about 6%. The company's third quarter financial report released last month showed that its revenue and earnings per share both fell short of analysts' expectations.
With the market seemingly disdainful of the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on global crude oil supply, and concerns about energy demand and economic growth continuing to weigh on the oil market, energy stocks have recently come under pressure again.
Tesla's stock price has risen by an astonishing 76% this year, but the latter also faces "headwinds" such as uncertainty in electric vehicle demand and fierce competition.
The major US stock indexes started strongly in November, with the S&P 500 index setting its best consecutive rise record in two years. However, some bearish people on Wall Street do not believe that this upward trend can continue. Morgan Stanley Chief Equity Strategist Mike Wilson wrote this week that this rise may be a sign of a bear market rebound, rather than a long-term rise.