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Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers:

U.S. short interest reporting has a structural problem: the data arrives twice a month, with a multi-day lag. By the time the exchange-reported figures land, positions have already moved, risk has been reassessed, and decisions have been made - often in the dark.

EquiLend Data & Analytics has launched a product specifically designed to close that gap: Predicted Short Interest, a daily AI-derived estimate of current short exposure, delivered with a high/low confidence range and built from live securities finance transactions.

Many practitioners have long relied on on-loan balances as a real-time substitute for reported short interest. It is a reasonable instinct - borrowing activity does reflect short positioning - but the relationship is noisy and context-dependent in ways that can mislead.

Three scenarios illustrate the challenge well:

When borrow data works well. In hard-to-borrow names, the link between borrowing and short interest is relatively clean. When Venture Global lost a USD 1 billion arbitration case against BP in October 2025, lending desks observed borrow balances rising in near-real time alongside increasing short exposure. When the exchange-reported figure eventually came out, it simply confirmed what......................

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