4 Stocks and 1 ETF That Had Soaring Short Interest Ahead of the Election

Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP) is the owner of Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile app, which publishes crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses. The company has a range of communities of contributors across the world that provide information about local businesses in the form of reviews and ratings, tips, photos and videos. The company was founded in 2004 and became publicly listed in 2012. It has 135 million monthly visitors and 95 million reviews in 2016. Besides acting as a classified, it also provides the online reservation service Yelp Reservations and online food delivery service Eat24. The stock saw an 80% increase in short interest before the elections and short as a percentage of the total float amounts to 12%. The stock has seen a flat performance over the last several days, though it has increased by 42% in the last year. Out of the 36 analysts covering Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP), 13 have rated it as a ‘Buy’ while 18 analysts have set a ‘Hold’ rating. Approximately $953 million worth of Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP)’s shares were held by 45 funds from our database at the end of the second quarter.

Valvoline Inc. (NYSE:VVV)’s stock saw a 39% increase in short interest over the period leading up to the elections. Approximately 28% of the company’s float is currently short, with 7.2 days to cover. Valvoline, whose stock went public at the end of September, recently has posted its first quarterly results as a listed company, as it reported fiscal fourth quarter revenue of $494 million and adjusted EPS of $0.29. While EPS missed the expectations by $0.02, the revenue was slightly higher than the consensus estimate. For the fiscal 2017, Valvoline Inc. (NYSE:VVV) expects sales growth between 3% and 5%, with an EBITDA margin of 24%-25%. Adjusted earnings per share are expected in the range of $1.28 to $1.38.

iShares MSCI Japan ETF (NYSEARCA:EWJ) is a Japanese ETF that tracks the MSCI Japan Index. The main objective of this ETF is to replicate the performance of the Japanese equity market. This ETF saw a 42% increase in its short interest and currently has 2.3 days to cover. The number of shares short is 37.7 million up from 26.7 million shares which were short in the period. Consumer Cyclicals and Financial Services are the top sector holdings of this ETF, with a 19% and 12% allocation, respectively. Some of the top holdings of this fund are Toyota Motors, Mitsubishi UFJ, Softbank, KDDI, Sumitomo Mitstui, Japan Tobacco, Mizuho Financial Group, and Fanuc Corporation. The market value of its assets under management amounts to around $14.1 billion and it provides a dividend yield of 1.45%. The number of funds from our database long EWJ declined by one to nine during the second quarter.

Nutanix Inc. (NASDAQ:NTNX) is a software company that provides enterprise cloud platform services to other corporations. Its platform is designed to run on commodity x86 servers with off-the-shelf central processing units (CPUs), memory and storage media. This stock saw a 97% increase in its short interest and currently more than 69% of its float is short. The total-days-to-cover figure amounts to 1.5. The company is led by Dheeraj Pandey who is the Chairman of the Board and its Chief Executive Officer. About 17 analysts currently cover this stock, out of which nine are rating it as a ‘Buy’.

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