“As for the second part of not understanding. I believe the short interest is made up of two camps. Those who think BOFI is a scam and is doomed to crash; (These people are purely short and have no long positions)and those who think BOFI is probably a good company but have hedged their long positions with short ones. I think the latter is most likely the larger share of the two given that 89.99% of the shares are held by institutions”
I appreciate your speculation. And the research/stats. Where did you find that 89.99% figure?
One implication might be that institutions are very starved for yield and so are very willing to take on the risk associated with shorting. I wonder what is the historical perspective on institutional risk if we use shorting interst as a proxy for risk appetite.
I suspect there’s some stats on this (Overall institutional short interest) out there somewhere.
G
Long bofi