Short Interest

One look at the headline numbers, and of course the short interest of Netflix, and one can see why the stock is being squeezed by nearly 30% after hours:

• Q4 Revenue: $945 MM, Exp. $934 MM
• Q4 EPS of $0.13, Exp. $(0.13)
• Q4 domestic contribution margin 18.5%, up from 16.4% in Q3 and 10.9$ in Q4 2011
• Total domestic subscribers 27.15 MM, paying subs: 25.47 MM
  • Forecasts 28.5MM-29.2MM domestic subscribers in Q1
• Sees Q1 Revenues of $1.004 billion to $1.031 billion
• Domestic DVD subs dropped from 8.61 to 8.22 while generating $254MM in revenue and $128MM in profit

In fact, all is either just a little bit better or much better if one looks at the projection set... until one looks at the actual Cash generated by the Business. Behold the Free Cash Flow as reported by the company... no, not AMZN, although it may well be its small cousin.

With the market basking in glow of good earnings results yesterday, mostly out of IBM, and to a lesser extent GOOG, which missed on the top line but beat on EPS squeezing some recent inbound shorts, S&P500 futures have yet to post a solid move to the upside. Perhaps a big reason for this is the recent recoupling of risk based on not one but two carry signals: the first is the well-known EURUSD pair, while the second is the recent entrant, the USDJPY, and it is the latter that continues to see a cover of the massive short interest accumulated over the recent 1000 pip move higher on what upon ongoing reflection has been a disappointing announcement out of the BOJ. Needless to say, the Nikkei whose recent surge higher was all due to currency weakness has tumbled overnight despite corporate fundamentals, if not economic data, which continues to post substantially subpar prints.

As if the already documented record $220 billion year end equity market injection courtesy of deposits (being used by bank prop arms to invest in risk assets) was not enough to send markets into nosebleed territory to start the new year, which fully explains the institutional (note: not retail) capital flood into equity funds and ETFs as has been trumpeted every day for the past week by CNBC (we will update the retail data from ICI today), here is yet another reason why the 2012 to 2013 transition has everything to do with trading technicals and nothing to do with fundamentals. As the chart below shows, the reported level of NYSE short interest tumbled as of December 31, to 12.9 billion shares, a major 5% decline - the largest incidentally since December 30, 2011 - the lowest level since March, and a trend which has likely persisted as the shorts once again have thrown in the towel (except for Herbalife of course). Of course, this collapse in bearish sentiment, which goes hand in hand with the surge in NYSE margin debt to 5 years highs, is only sustainable if and only if the Fed has now fully eradicated all risk and all volatility in perpetuity. Which for now, judging by the epic ongoing smackdown in the VIX, is succeeding. That will change.

Whooooooooosh!

Three months ago, in anticipation of the now traditional year end ramp in "story stocks" (i.e., those companies in the Russell 2000 that have negligible or negative cash flow, yet have a "story" to them, and/or massive short interest usually for a reason) we penned an article titled "Presenting the most shorted stocks" focusing on the 50 most shorted/hated names in the Russell 2000. We suggested that for "the overly aggressive out there, and those who are tired of watching paint dry, one option is to create an equal-weighted basket of the 20 most hated names, and hope for the arrival of the one catalyst that forces a massive squeeze." That, or just await the traditional rotation into high beta garbage that comes every year like clockwork in the last months of the year. Sure enough precisely this happened in 2012 as it always does, with the Russell 2000 outperforming the S&P notably since November, with the index hitting all time highs a few days ago, yet our most-shorted basket crushing the returns of both the S&P and the broader Russell 2000 by a substantial amount. Alas, those hoping that that the Russell bubble will continue indefinitely may want to promptly reassess, as moments ago Interactive Brokers just announced it would hike both initial and maintenance margins on all low cap stocks (under $250 million in market cap) beginning January 11, 2013, to 100%!

Update: this is just getting better and better: flashing headlines that the SEC has opened an inquiry into Herbalife. Dow Jones adds that inquiry may not result in action. Stock slides on the news, however following speculation that the SEC may (or rather should) be investigating the various massive puts in HLF stock before the Ackman presentation in mid-December, it bounces. Total chaos, and all very exciting.

One guy (whose positive P&L in 2012 was primarily thanks to the gap lower in HLF in the last two weeks of 2012, since filled entirely and then some), says $0. Another guy, whose nearly $10 billion hedge fund was up 30% in 2012, says over $60. Whom do you trust? As far as we are concerned, the second Tilson goes long, we dump everything.

As we warned on December 26, when the stock was trading in the mid 20's the pain for shorts is horrible and getting worse (courtesy of the best and always absolutely certain contrarian signal - the involvement of Whitney Tilson) and is about to send the stock into the stratosphere following a very surprising announcement by none other than Bill Ackman buddy Dan Loeb, who just filed a 13F reporting a 8.24% passive stake in Herbalife sending the stock surging. In other news: this may be Herbadeath for Whitney Tilson, who may well be on track to blow up a second fund in under a year.

A week ago, on December 26, when Whitney Tilson announced he was piggybacking on the Einhorn-Ackman Herbalife trade, we asked if a short squeeze was imminent "as Tilson jumps on the Herbalife bandwagon." The stock was trading in the mid-$20s. This morning it will open just shy of $35, a 30% gain in one week, which more or less answers our rhetorical question. As a reminder, the Herbalife as a "ponzi scheme" thesis has been around since 2009 (check valueinvestorclub.com, not to be confused with the aforementioned Tilson's VIC) and anyone who assumes this is a valuation catalyst is very much wrong. Which is why the recent surge in the stock may just be the beginning: as was reported late last week, Short Interest in the stock has soared ever since HLF came to the forefront of newsflow to a whopping 26.22 million shares, an increase of 5 million shares short in the past week alone, and amounting to 24% short interest of the total % of shares outstanding.

Just hours after Ackman announced his joining Einhorn's alleged Herbalife short, we jokingly tweeted our expectation of bandwagon-following 'value' investors imminent herding...

Ackman joins Einhorn in the HLF short. Next up: Titney Wilson

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 19, 2012

And sure enough, with the holidays providing just enough time to read the 300 pages and to form his own "blindingly obvious" conclusion, Whitney Tilson has jumped in short HLF. We can only imagine the cost of borrow and wonder on the post-OPEX timing of a short squeeze given the huge short interest and the fact that HLF has recently hired Boies, Schiller, and Flexner to defend its business model. HLF is trading up 2% in pre-market.

AMZN - Profitless, but making it up in volume.   

The good news is that we can't foretell the future; if we could, it wouldn't be interesting at all.

One place where the S&P level still does have a modest influence is the number of shorts in the market, which are strategically used by repo desks and custodians (State Street and BoNY), to force wholesale short squeezes at given inflection points, usually just when the bottom is about to drop out. The problem is that even short squeezes are increasingly becoming fewer and far between, for the simple reason that the Fed has managed to nearly anihilate shorters as a trading class with its policy of Dow 36,000 uber alles. This was demonstrated with the latest NYSE Group short interest data, which tumbled to 13.6 billion shares short as of the end of September, or the lowest since early May, just as the market was swooning to its lowest level of 2012 to date.

By now it should be no secret that under the New Centrally-Planned Normal, good is great, but worst is far greater. It is therefore no surprise that in the past year, some of the highest returning stocks have been the companies which have seen wave after wave of shorts come in, attempting to ride the underlying equity value to zero, only to see themselves scrambling to cover short squeezes, generated either due to the pull of borrow by an overeager shareholder (think SHLD), or due to bad news not being horrible enough, leading to short covering ramps (think AMZN at each and every worse earnings call, which however is never bad enough to finally trounc the last traces of the "bull story"). Which is why, as we have done on various occasions in the past, we have collated the most hated stocks in the less prominent but far more volatile Russell 2000 Index, where we have limited the universe to the 700 or so stocks with a market cap between $50 million and $1,000 billion, or those which tend to have aggressive moves up or down on modest volume (i.e., not widely owned). We have then sorted these in descending order of Short Interest as a % of Float. The results are presented below.

The S&P500 may be soaring to new 2012 highs, and has its all time highs within short squeeze distance, yet paradoxically this is arguably the worst possible news to the cadre of US hedge fund managers used to beating the market year after year, thus justifying their (increasingly more unsustainable) 2 and 20 fees. The reason: according to just a released report quantifying hedge fund performance so far in 2012, with an average return of 4.6% as of August 3 compared to a 12% return for the S&P, a pathetic 11% of all hedge funds are beating S&P year to date. This is the worst yearly aggregate S&P 500 underperformance by the hedge fund industry in history, and also explains why the smooth sailing in the S&P500 belies the fact that nearly every single hedge fund manager (and at least 89% of all) is currently panicking like never before knowing very well there are only 4 more months left to beat the S&P or face terminal redemption requests. And with $1.2 trillion in gross equity positions, the day of redemption reckoning at the end of the year (and just after September 30 for that matter as well) could be the most painful yet. it also explains why, just like every other quarter in which career risk is at all time highs, HFs are dumping everything not nailed down and buying up AAPL, which as of June 30 was held by an all time high 230 hedge funds (more on that later).

It's not unheard of for stocks to rally when economic conditions are weak, particularly when corporate profits are doing well; Q2 marked a new all-time high run rate of S&P profits. As a result, the 13% gain in the S&P this year is not a complete anomaly. But, as Michael Cembalest of JPMorgan notes, in prior cycles, 'weak economy' stock market rallies were predicated more on the view that a private sector recovery was just around the corner, rather than the current view that more Central Bank stimulus is just around the corner. The other notable aspect of the rally is that it took place as earnings forecasts for 2012 and 2013 have been falling, and as Q2 revenue growth slowed. To paraphrase what’s going on, Cembalest believes "Bronze is the new Gold" as expectations are so low, that anything better than recessionary data can be well-received by markets. Of course, the other factor behind the recent rally is the prospect of unlimited bond purchases by the ECB to which the JPM CIO science-fictionally analogizes: "Swallowing an alien is one sure-fire way to get rid of it, but then you have to wonder what happens once it gets digested. Color me nervous how this all turns out."