Short Interest in ONEOK Rose 25% Recently

The short interest as a percentage of floating shares in ONEOK (OKE) is 3.3%, which is higher compared to the 2.6% at the end of February 2018. According to data released on March 26, 2018, the total number of ONEOK shares shorted was ~13.3 million on March 15, 2018, 25% higher compared to ~10.6 million on February 28, 2018. The short interest in ONEOK is, however, lower than the average of ~4.7% in the last five years.

The above graph shows short interest in OKE as a percentage of its float along with OKE’s stock price. The higher short interest in ONEOK may show that more investors think its price will fall soon compared to investors that expected a fall at the end of February 2018.

The short interest in ONEOK is ~13.3 million shares, whereas the average daily trading volume is ~2.9 million shares. Thus, ONEOK’s short interest ratio is ~5x, which indicates that it will take nearly five days to cover all open short positions in OKE’s stock.

The short interest in Kinder Morgan (KMI) was ~62.8 million shares on March 15, 2018. It was 1.9% higher compared to ~61.6 million shares on February 28, 2018. The total number of Enterprise Products Partners (EPD) shares shorted was ~16.8 million on March 15, 2018, 9.2% lower compared to ~18.5 million on February 28, 2018.

In the next part, we’ll look at Wall Street analysts’ recommendations for ONEOK and its peers.