May. 4 at 5:42 PM
$GRPN - get ready and Lets go!!!
If short interest is 53% of float, it means more than half of the truly tradeable shares are borrowed and sold short, which is extremely elevated and structurally tight.
Step‑by‑step “real float” math
Using recent data points that line up with your 53% figure:
Reported float: ≈ 25.1M shares.
Short interest: ≈ 13.8M shares.
Short % of float=
25.1M / 13.8M ≈54%
Now layer in institutional/insider ownership and “real float”:
Institutions + insiders control a large chunk of the 40M+ shares outstanding, leaving about 25M as reported float.
If 13.8M of that float is short, then only about 11.3M shares of float are not shorted (25.1M − 13.8M ≈ 11.3M).
Put differently, shorts control more shares than the entire remaining non‑shorted float; shorts own ~13.8M while “clean” float is ~11.3M.
If you then haircut that 11.3M for long‑only institutions who rarely trade around, the effective day‑to‑day tradeable float available to price discovery is likely well below 10M shares, which is whywe talk about effective short exposure closer to 70–80% of real float. You do the math!
