Sunday, December 11, 2011

Hypothecation and an epic short squeeze?

By now everyone has read about MF Global and we are all now familiar with hypocathecation and re-hypothecation.  One of the bizarre side affects that we should watch out for is a massive short squeeze in equities, and I think most importantly the metals in the futures markets and the miners in the equity markets.

The miners have been relentlessly shorted in a paired trade for the past year, and the metals/miners index is nearly back to 08 levels.  My view is as more and more brokers decide to reduce their risks, they are going to be calling back their shares or closing short positions they allowed to be borrowed and/or close massive naked short positions and a massive squeeze will be on.  It will only take one broker to start the ball.

To prepare I looked at the biggest short positions per trading volume and posted those below.  There are some nice gold and silver miners, but what stands out are the Uranium miners and GORO.  I will start adding positions in these names.  Days to cover is on the second to far right column.




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