Analyzing Short Interest Trends in ConocoPhillips’s Stock

As of July 14, 2017, ConocoPhillips’s (COP) total shares shorted (or short interest) stood at ~31.48 million, whereas its average daily volume is ~5.91 million. This difference means short interest ratio for COP’s stock is ~3.77x. Here, the average daily volume is calculated for the short interest reporting period from July 1 to July 14, 2017.

• ConocoPhillips’s short interest ratio has a 52-week high of 3.77x and 52-week low of 1.79x
• ConocoPhillips’s short interest as a percentage of 20-day average volume, 90-day average volume, and 180-day average volume is 4.22x, 3.83x, and 4.07x, respectively.
• When we come from a perspective of shares outstanding, we see that current short interest in ConocoPhillips’s stock as a percentage of shares outstanding is at ~2.55%.
• Short interest in ConocoPhillips’s stock as a percentage of shares outstanding is on the lower side compared with many other upstream stocks from the SPDR S&P Oil and Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP).
• As you can see in the above chart, short interest in ConocoPhillips’s stock as a percentage of shares outstanding has risen from ~1.17% to ~2.55% in 2017 despite a ~13% decline in COP’s stock price during the same period. To learn more about COP’s recent price performance, see the previous part of this series.

Other oil and gas exploration and production companies like Devon Energy (KOS), W&T Offshore (WTI), and Marathon OIl (MRO) have short interest as a percentage of shares outstanding of ~2.0%, ~7.4%, and ~6.1%, respectively. Just like ConocoPhillips, both Devon Energy and Marathon Oil saw an increase in their short interest in the last month. The Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3X ETF (ERX) is a leveraged ETF that invests in domestic companies from the energy sector.