The Magnificent 7 stocks (GOOG\GOOGL, MSFT, AAPL, NVDA, AMZN, META, & TSLA) are the most widely held group of stocks in the U.S. with a total market cap of $13.5 trillion, or 27% of the entire $50.8 trillion U.S. market cap. The market caps of these seven stocks are even larger than the second largest market in the world, China at $11.5 trillion.

And as expected, their short interest is also outsized at a combined $127 billion, or 12% of the $1.08 trillion of total short interest of the U.S. market.

The Mag 7 also make up the top seven most shorted stocks in the U.S.:

Mag 7 short interest has been increasing in 2024 despite the Nasdaq up over 5% for the year. Total short interest increased +17% from $109 billion to $127 billion in 2024, which consisted of $7.1 billion of additional short selling coupled with a $11.0 billion mark-to-market increase in the value of the existing share shorted. NVDA, MSFT and TSLA had the largest increase in short selling in 2024 while APPL and AMZN led the group in year-to-date short covering.

But over the last week we have seen mostly short covering in the group as their stock prices have trended upward. The Mag 7 mark-to-market value of shares shorted has increased by $8.9 billion over the last seven days and we have seen some squeeze related short covering in NVDA which was partially offset with increased short selling in MSFT, AAPL and META.

Today’s price weakness, led by TSLA, has generated $3.3 billion of one day mark-to-market profits for Mag 7 short sellers and turning an unprofitable April into one with $3.0 billion of profits, +2.4%. Mag 7 shorts are still down -$9.0 billion, -7.7%, for the year.

TSLA and AAPL are the two profitable year-to-date shorts of the seven, up $5.6 billion and $2.4 billion, respectively. While NVDA, META and AMZN were the laggards with -$9.8 billion, -$2.3 billion and -$2.1 billion of year-to-date mark-to-market losses.

Short interest in the Mag 7 stocks will always be high it represents an easy and cheap way to hedge the tech aspect of a portfolio. But the momentum of the market, especially the tech side, does dictate the majority of the variances of short interest on these seven companies. Over the past five years Mag 7 short interest averaged $86 billion with a low of $57 billion in 2022 and the $127 billion of short interest we are seeing now is a historical high for the Mag 7.

Our Blacklight SaaS platform and Black App provides an up-to-date view of short selling and short covering on an equity, sector, index, or country-wide basis allowing investors\traders to better manage their existing long and short positions. The Black MaP and Black App products provide a total view of long and short positioning in the market with a breakdown between Active\Passive long investors, 24 Fund type entities, over 50k securities globally across 108 countries and data from 58 regulatory exchanges.