Short sellers leaned harder into Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) just as Elon Musk decided to cancel.
The day after Musk posted on Sept 30 that he had cancelled Netflix, FINRA off-exchange short volume in NFLX jumped to 642,836 shares on Oct 1, the highest daily tally since Sept 18 in the available data retrieved by Finbold from Fintel. That marks a 20% day-over-day increase from the prior session.
But the picture isn’t quite as simple as “Musk tweets, shorts pile in.” On Oct 1, FINRA tracked 1.59 million total off-exchange shares, putting the short-volume ratio at 40.48%. That’s actually lower than Sept 30’s 44.32%, meaning short trades rose in absolute terms but were diluted by even heavier overall trading.
Netflix daily short volume
The nuance matters. Daily short volume reflects activity, much of it intraday hedging by market makers, not necessarily a structural bet against Netflix. The broader short interest is still modest: 6.96 million shares short, or 1.65% of float, with 2.87 days to cover. That’s nowhere near the levels that scream “pile-on.”
What it does show is traders opportunistically leaning into the Musk narrative. The timing is uncanny: Musk posts on Sept 30, short volumes hit their highest since Sept 18 the very next day, and the stock closes Oct 1 down 2.34% at $1,170.90.
For now, the takeaway has a touch of irony: one billionaire’s cancelled subscription didn’t trigger a short squeeze, but it did give bears a headline to work with.
