Short interest // FINRA, biweekly, dated

TSLA short interest

Tesla, Inc. Common Stock

As of the 2026-07-15 settlement, which is 26 days ago. FINRA publishes twice a month on the seventh business day after settlement, so this cycle was published around 2026-07-24 and the next is expected around 2026-08-11. No free source anywhere has anything fresher, including sites that display this number next to a live price.

Shares sold short70,646,375
Prior settlement79,109,257
Change-10.7%
Days to coverShares short divided by average daily volume, both FINRA figures.1.78
Average daily volume (FINRA, the days-to-cover denominator)39,663,962
ExchangeNasdaq (National Market)
Short interest, % of shares outstandingPercent of shares outstanding. Not percent of float, and the two are not the same number.1.79%
Shares outstanding (from filings)3,949,547,394
Different measurement // daily, and not a position

Daily short volume

This is not the number above.Short interest is the position still held short, reported twice a month. Short volume is the share of a single day’s trading that was marked as a sell-short order, published daily. Most of it is market makers hedging and closing within the same session, so a stock printing a high figure here is not that percentage sold short.

Latest session (2026-08-07)
38.0%
Average, last 10 sessions
42.5%
2026-08-0738.0%
2026-08-0648.5%
2026-08-0548.3%
2026-08-0442.0%
2026-08-0348.0%
2026-07-3140.6%
2026-07-3035.6%
2026-07-2942.4%
2026-07-2838.4%
2026-07-2743.3%

FINRA Reg SHO consolidated daily file. Sessions with no row for TSLA are omitted rather than shown as zero.

Price context // daily bars, not short data

Where the price sits

Session of 2026-08-07, from 275 sessions of daily bars. These are price figures, not short figures, and they update daily rather than twice a month.

Close$328.58
Volume, latest session39,492,345
Volume vs averageAgainst its own 50-session average of 43,703,755, same series on both sides0.90x
% from 52-week high ($498.83)-34.1%
% from 52-week low ($297.38)+10.5%
52-week performance-25.8%
% from 50-day average ($380.44)-13.6%
% from 200-day average ($408.80)-19.6%

Why there is no “% of float” here

Percent of float is the number the paid trackers lead with, and it is the one number in this category that cannot be published honestly for free. There is no free float share count: the SEC’s XBRL concept for float does not exist, and the closest one, public float, is measured in dollars and is filed once a year with the annual report. For Apple it currently reads as of March 2025, sixteen months ago.

So a free site showing percent of float is doing one of two things: quietly substituting shares outstanding, which for a heavily insider-held small company is a wildly different number, or republishing a commercial estimate it licensed. We publish the percentage that filed data supports, label it as percent of shares outstanding, and leave the other one out. Where a figure is measured, this site says what it was measured against. Read the methodology.

What days to cover means

Open short interest divided by average daily trading volume: roughly how many full sessions of normal volume it would take for every short position to be bought back. FINRA computes it per security at each settlement and we pass their figure through. This matters more than it sounds, because sites that compute their own pick their own volume window and rarely say which, so the same stock shows materially different values depending on where you look.

High short interest and high days to cover describe fuel, not ignition. They say a crowded position exists; they say nothing about whether it unwinds, and heavily shorted stocks frequently keep falling. Educational information, not investment advice.

TSLA short interest FAQ

How old is this TSLA short interest figure?

It is the 2026-07-15 settlement, which is 26 days ago. FINRA collects short interest twice a month and publishes on the seventh business day after each settlement date, so this was published around 2026-07-24 and the next cycle is expected around 2026-08-11. There is no fresher short interest available anywhere for free, including from tools that display it next to a live price.

Why does this show percent of shares outstanding rather than percent of float?

Because float share counts are not published by any free source. The SEC XBRL concept for float does not exist, and the nearest one is measured in dollars and comes only from the annual report. Every free site showing a float percentage is republishing a commercial estimate. We publish the percentage we can compute from filed data and label it for what it is, rather than passing shares outstanding off as float.

Where does days to cover come from?

Shares short divided by average daily volume, using FINRA’s own two published figures. We do not use FINRA’s own days-to-cover field, because it is floored at 1.00: across the current file, 7,869 securities, over a third of the market, are published at exactly 1.00 and nearly all of them are genuinely below it. One stock with a true ratio of 0.03 is published as 1.00. Sites that instead invent their own average-volume window produce a different problem, which is why the operands here are both FINRA’s.

Is high short interest a buy signal?

No. High short interest is frequently the market pricing real problems, and many heavily shorted stocks keep falling. This page measures positioning. It makes no recommendation.

Keep going: short squeeze screener · TSLA dilution profile · what short interest means · methodology