Kimberly-Clark is one of the most heavily shorted stocks in the S&P 500. At the October 15 settlement, 50.6 million of its shares were sold short, 15.2% of its shares outstanding, up from 8.3 million a year earlier. Read the usual way, that looks like a growing crowd betting the Kleenex maker will fall.
The timing says something else. The position started climbing in November 2025, right after Kimberly-Clark agreed to buy Kenvue and pay for it partly in its own shares. In a deal like that, arbitrage funds commonly buy the target and short the buyer, so a short position can grow with the deal rather than with a view on the company.
That made us ask how many of the most-shorted stocks in the index have a reason like this written into their own filings. We took FINRA's short interest for every S&P 500 member at the October 15, 2026 settlement, ranked the 25 most-shorted by share of shares outstanding, and searched each company's SEC filings for the four standard sources of hedged short selling: a stock-for-stock deal or exchange offer, convertible or exchangeable notes, forward sales of new shares, and mandatory convertible preferred stock.
The data behind this piece
Explore the primary data Equibles carries for KMB:
The 25 most-shorted S&P 500 stocks
Short interest is the number of shares sold short and not yet bought back, reported by brokers to FINRA twice a month. Days to cover divides it by average daily volume: how many days of normal trading it would take for every short to buy back.
| Rank | Stock | Short interest, % of shares | Shares short | Change in a year | Days to cover | Hedging source in filings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norwegian Cruise Line | 19.4% | 89.2 million | +168% | 4.2 | Exchangeable notes |
| 2 | Lululemon Athletica | 15.4% | 16.3 million | +103% | 3.7 | None found |
| 3 | Kimberly-Clark | 15.2% | 50.6 million | +508% | 10.2 | Pending stock deal (Kenvue) |
| 4 | Charter Communications | 14.6% | 17.4 million | +12% | 5.9 | None found |
| 5 | Akamai Technologies | 13.0% | 18.7 million | +85% | 3.7 | Convertible notes |
| 6 | Super Micro Computer | 12.2% | 80.1 million | -5% | 2.6 | Convertible notes, mandatory convertible preferred |
| 7 | T. Rowe Price | 12.0% | 25.5 million | +132% | 12.3 | None found |
| 8 | Fair Isaac | 11.2% | 2.43 million | +154% | 1.7 | None found |
| 9 | 11.2% | 21.6 million | +13% | 5.1 | None found | |
| 10 | Medtronic | 10.9% | 139.0 million | +830% | 2.9 | Exchange offer (MiniMed) |
| 11 | First Solar | 10.8% | 11.6 million | +38% | 5.8 | None found |
| 12 | FactSet | 10.8% | 3.79 million | +62% | 5.2 | None found |
| 13 | Mosaic | 10.6% | 33.8 million | +172% | 3.3 | None found |
| 14 | Alliant Energy | 10.6% | 27.4 million | +94% | 9.8 | Forward share sales, convertible notes |
| 15 | Gartner | 10.4% | 6.59 million | +37% | 8.2 | None found |
| 16 | Albemarle | 10.4% | 12.3 million | -6% | 5.0 | Mandatory convertible preferred |
| 17 | Pinnacle West Capital | 10.3% | 12.5 million | +167% | 8.8 | Forward share sales, convertible notes |
| 18 | Live Nation Entertainment | 10.3% | 24.2 million | +25% | 12.7 | Convertible notes |
| 19 | Lennar | 9.7% | 23.2 million | +76% | 3.6 | None found |
| 20 | Wynn Resorts | 9.7% | 9.94 million | +115% | 4.8 | None found |
| 21 | MGM Resorts | 9.1% | 22.9 million | +4% | 4.8 | None found |
| 22 | Coinbase | 9.0% | 23.8 million | +82% | 2.9 | Convertible notes |
| 23 | Tractor Supply | 8.9% | 46.4 million | +27% | 3.7 | None found |
| 24 | Omnicom | 8.9% | 24.2 million | -19% | 11.0 | None found |
| 25 | International Paper | 8.8% | 46.8 million | -13% | 8.4 | None found |
"Change in a year" compares shares sold short with the October 15, 2025 settlement. Skyworks would rank fourth on its last reported share count, but it issued new shares when its Qorvo merger closed on October 5, after that count, so its percentage is overstated and we left it out of the ranking. Charter's count moved the other way: its August merger with Liberty Broadband cut its share count by a net 4.7 million shares, so its 14.6% is, if anything, a little low.
Stock deals: short the buyer
When a company pays for an acquisition with its own shares, the target's stock usually trades a little below what the deal will deliver. Arbitrage funds buy the target and sell the buyer's shares short to lock in that gap, and they hold the position until the deal closes.
Kimberly-Clark (KMB $109.63 -0.47%) agreed on November 2, 2025 to buy Kenvue (KVUE $19.50 -0.36%) for $3.50 in cash plus 0.14625 Kimberly-Clark shares per Kenvue share. Its short position had been between 4.8 and 9.3 million shares for months. By the November 14 settlement it was 17.2 million, and it kept climbing while the deal waited for approvals, to 53.2 million at the end of September. In an 8-K filed on October 20, Kimberly-Clark said it expects to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, and that it had priced $4.9 billion of notes to fund the cash part.
Skyworks (SWKS $83.34 -0.11%) shows the full cycle. It agreed on October 27, 2025 to buy Qorvo for 0.960 Skyworks shares plus $32.50 in cash per Qorvo share. Its short position rose from 10.6 million shares to a peak of 34.6 million at the end of August, then fell to 22.3 million by October 15, after the deal closed on October 5.
A closed deal doesn't always clear the position. Omnicom (OMC $79.83 -3.45%) completed its all-stock merger with Interpublic on November 26, 2025, issuing 124.4 million new shares. Its short position fell from 30.2 million to 22.8 million shares in the next two weeks, but it is back at 24.2 million and Omnicom is still 24th on the list, with nothing in its filings to explain it now. We count it as "none found".
An exchange offer: Medtronic and MiniMed
Medtronic (MDT $94.79 -0.65%) is the sharpest move in the data. On September 14 it opened an offer to swap shares of its diabetes business, MiniMed, for Medtronic shares. The final exchange ratio hit the offer's upper limit, 4.5939 MiniMed shares for each Medtronic share, and when the offer expired on October 9, holders had tendered 297.5 million Medtronic shares. Medtronic took 55.0 million, so every tendering holder got 18.3% of their shares accepted, apart from odd lots.
Over the same weeks, Medtronic's short position went from 12.1 million shares at the end of August to 40.0 million on September 30 and 139.0 million on October 15.
Exchange offers like this draw arbitrage traders, who tender shares and hedge with short sales, and the size of the oversubscription shows how many shares were tendered beyond what Medtronic could take. The final count came on October 14, the day before this settlement, with unaccepted shares to be returned "promptly". The October 31 figures, due from FINRA around November 10, will show how fast the position unwinds.
The other side of the trade shows up too. Before the exchange, Medtronic owned 252.8 million of MiniMed's 281.3 million shares, leaving about 28.5 million in other hands. Short interest in MiniMed rose from 6.0 million shares at the end of July to 18.2 million on September 30, close to two thirds of those shares, and to 20.7 million on October 15. Buying the parent, tendering it and shorting the subsidiary shares you expect to receive is the usual way to lock in a split-off like this one.
Convertible and exchangeable notes
A convertible note can be turned into stock. The funds that buy most of these notes commonly sell the company's shares short to hedge, so a big convertible issue tends to come with a lasting short position. The companies know it: Lumentum (LITE $818.10 +8.19%), just outside the top 25 at 8.6%, lists "the potential impact of the hedging activity" of its capped call counterparties as a risk to its share price.
Five of the top 25 have large amounts outstanding:
| Company | Notes outstanding | From |
|---|---|---|
| Akamai Technologies | $7.64 billion in five convertible series due 2027 to 2033, including $3.5 billion issued in May 2026 | 10-Q, June 30, 2026 |
| Super Micro Computer | $4.73 billion in convertible notes due 2028, 2029 and 2030, plus 4.3 million shares of mandatory convertible preferred stock | 10-K, June 30, 2026 |
| Live Nation Entertainment | $3.5 billion in convertible notes due 2029, 2030 and 2031 | 10-Q, June 30, 2026 |
| Norwegian Cruise Line | $1.98 billion in exchangeable notes due 2027 and 2030, issued by its NCL Corporation subsidiary and exchangeable into Norwegian shares | 10-Q, June 30, 2026 |
| Coinbase | Convertible notes due 2029, 2030 and 2032, counted as 13.2 million potential shares in the second quarter | 10-Q, June 30, 2026 |
Norwegian has the highest short interest in the index, 19.4% of its shares. The notes are one documented reason; how much of the 89.2 million shares they explain is not something FINRA's data can tell.
Utilities selling shares forward
Utilities need a steady supply of new equity to fund their grids, and many raise it through forward sale agreements: a counterparty, usually a bank, borrows the company's shares, sells them now, and the company delivers new shares later at the agreed price. Alliant Energy's 10-Q says it plainly. Its counterparties "borrowed and sold an aggregate of 6,550,857 shares" in the second quarter under its 2026 program, and on June 30 it could have settled all its outstanding forwards with 6,912,857 shares for $504 million.
Pinnacle West (PNW $105.34 -0.51%), the Arizona utility, had thirteen forward sale agreements open on June 30, covering about $816 million of stock, and signed a fourteenth for $84 million that took effect on July 6. Both utilities also have convertible notes: Alliant's $575 million due 2028 and Pinnacle West's $525 million due 2027.
Their short positions grew with the programs. Alliant Energy's (LNT $69.50 -0.23%) went from 14.1 million to 27.4 million shares in a year, and Pinnacle West's from 4.7 million to 12.5 million. Utility shares trade little, so both take nine to ten days to cover, one of the reasons a utility can look crowded on a screen.
A mandatory convertible: Albemarle
Albemarle (ALB $93.42 -0.27%) has 2.3 million shares of 7.25% mandatory convertible preferred stock outstanding, traded as depositary shares. Each preferred share converts on March 1, 2027 into between 7.618 and 9.140 common shares, so 17.5 million to 21.0 million new shares are coming. Holders of mandatory convertibles commonly hedge by shorting the common stock. Albemarle's short position, 12.3 million shares, is about where it was a year ago.
The 15 with no hedging source
For Lululemon (LULU $102.91 +3.94%), Charter Communications (CHTR $102.18 -5.92%), T. Rowe Price (TROW $103.49 -0.68%), Fair Isaac (FICO $708.07 -13.15%), Reddit (RDDT $138.45 -4.02%), First Solar (FSLR $168.15 -2.23%), FactSet (FDS $323.39 -2.39%), Mosaic (MOS $17.71 -0.73%), Gartner (IT $231.03 +0.33%), Lennar (LEN $83.98 -1.11%), Wynn Resorts (WYNN $74.20 +2.02%), MGM Resorts (MGM $28.54 +1.71%), Tractor Supply (TSCO $32.53 -2.66%), Omnicom, and International Paper (IP $33.40 +0.63%), we found no pending stock deal, convertible notes, forward share sales or mandatory convertible in the filings since October 2025. Lennar's exchange offer for its Millrose shares and Omnicom's merger with Interpublic both finished in late 2025, and Charter's merger with Liberty Broadband closed on August 20. The convertible preferred units Charter issued to Cox that same day are held by Cox and don't trade, so we did not count them.
Several of these positions grew fast. Lululemon's short interest doubled to 16.3 million shares, T. Rowe Price's rose 132% to 25.5 million, Fair Isaac's 154% and Mosaic's 172%. T. Rowe Price would take 12.3 days of normal volume to cover, the second longest in the top 25. For these names, the filings give no other explanation for the short interest.
How to read a high short interest
Before treating a short interest number as a vote against the company, four checks in the filings separate hedges from bets:
- A pending stock deal or exchange offer. Look for an 8-K with Item 1.01 or 2.01, an S-4 or a Schedule TO. The buyer in a stock deal and the parent in an exchange offer collect arbitrage shorts.
- Convertible or exchangeable notes. The debt note in the latest 10-Q lists each series and its principal.
- Forward share sales. The equity note in a 10-Q describes them; they are common at utilities.
- Mandatory convertible preferred stock. It appears on the 10-Q cover when it is listed, as Albemarle's is.
Then check the share count. A percentage is only as current as the shares outstanding behind it. A company that just issued shares in a deal, like Skyworks, looks more shorted than it is until its next report, and one that just retired shares, like Charter, looks less shorted.
Every stock in the table links to its short interest page on Equibles, with each settlement, days to cover and a forecast of the next figure; the most-shorted stocks (MOST-SHORTED) page ranks every US stock by the same measure. With the Equibles MCP server connected to Claude or ChatGPT, a prompt like "Using Equibles, show Kimberly-Clark's short interest for the last 12 settlements and list its 8-K filings since November 2025" puts the position and the deal filings side by side.
How we built this
- Universe: the 498 companies in the S&P 500 at our latest index snapshot with short interest at the October 15, 2026 settlement.
- Short interest: FINRA's figure for each company's listed common stock at the October 15, 2026 settlement, against the October 15, 2025 settlement for the change in a year. Days to cover is FINRA's.
- Shares outstanding: the same count our stock pages use, every class of common stock. For Coinbase and Reddit, whose class B shares are not listed, short interest as a share of the class A shares alone is higher (10.7% and 14.8%).
- Left out of the ranking: Skyworks, which completed its Qorvo merger on October 5, 2026 and issued shares after its last reported share count. Charter stays in on its June 30 count of 119.3 million shares, which its August 20 merger with Liberty Broadband reduced by a net 4.7 million.
- Filings: for each of the top 25, we searched SEC full-text search from October 1, 2025 for convertible, exchangeable and mandatory convertible securities and forward sale agreements in 10-Q and 10-K reports, and for merger agreements and exchange offers in 8-K, 10-Q and Schedule TO filings, then read every hit. Mentions in boilerplate, such as debt covenants that refer to exchange offers in general, don't count.
- Year comparisons use shares sold short, not percentages, because share counts change. For the index-wide median change, we left out the 17 companies with a stock split or similar adjustment between the two settlements.
Limitations
- FINRA's data says how many shares are short, not who holds the positions or why. A hedging source in the filings is a documented reason for short selling, not proof that a given share of the position is a hedge.
- A source can explain part of a position. We did not estimate how many shares each hedge accounts for.
- "None found" covers the four sources we searched. Shorts can also hedge options, ETF creations or positions in other securities, none of which shows up in a company's filings.
- Short interest is a snapshot twice a month. Medtronic's figure in particular may look very different at the October 31 settlement.
Conclusion
A high short interest is often read as a crowd betting against a company. In the S&P 500 this month, 10 of the 25 most-shorted stocks have a deal, a convertible or a forward share sale in their filings that brings short sellers with it, from Kimberly-Clark's pending purchase of Kenvue to the counterparties selling Alliant Energy's shares ahead of its forward sales. For the remaining 15, the filings give no other explanation, and it pays to look at what changed in the past year.
Sources
- Kimberly-Clark: merger agreement with Kenvue, 8-K filed November 3, 2025 (0001104659-25-105220); expected fourth-quarter 2026 close and notes offering, 8-K filed October 20, 2026 (0001104659-26-117036).
- Skyworks: merger agreement with Qorvo, 8-K filed October 28, 2025 (0001104659-25-102806); completion on October 5, 2026, 8-K (0001104659-26-113538).
- Charter Communications: 119,277,492 Class A shares outstanding at June 30, 2026, 10-Q cover (0001091667-26-000052); Liberty Broadband merger and Cox transaction completed August 20, 2026, retiring about 38.6 million Class A shares and issuing about 33.9 million, 8-K (0001140361-26-033909).
- Omnicom: IPG merger completed November 26, 2025, 124,352,188 shares issued, 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 (0000029989-26-000026).
- Medtronic: exchange offer, 8-K filed September 14, 2026 (0001628280-26-062505); final exchange ratio, Rule 425 filing of October 8, 2026 (0001628280-26-065402); final results, Rule 425 filing of October 14, 2026 (0001628280-26-065819).
- MiniMed: 281,349,931 shares outstanding as of September 3, 2026, 10-Q cover (0001628280-26-060926).
- Akamai: 10-Q for June 30, 2026, Note 7 (0001086222-26-000086).
- Super Micro Computer: 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2026 (0001375365-26-000022).
- Live Nation Entertainment: 10-Q for June 30, 2026 (0001335258-26-000035).
- Norwegian Cruise Line: 10-Q for June 30, 2026, exchangeable notes table (0001104659-26-089657).
- Coinbase: 10-Q for June 30, 2026 (0001679788-26-000088).
- Alliant Energy: 10-Q for June 30, 2026 (0000352541-26-000043).
- Pinnacle West: 10-Q for June 30, 2026, Note 13 (0000764622-26-000041).
- Albemarle: 10-Q for June 30, 2026 (0000915913-26-000102).
- Lumentum: 10-K for the year ended June 27, 2026 (0001628280-26-057358).
- Lennar: Millrose exchange offer, fourth-quarter 2025 results, 8-K filed December 16, 2025 (0001628280-25-057408).
This study describes public data and filings. It is not investment advice.