GameStop Short Sellers Need 17 Trading Days to Cover

FINRA short interest for Friday, July 31 covers 22,341 symbols. The data shows GME shorts at 53,736,062 shares and a days-to-cover ratio of 17.06. The short quantity is down 3.05% from the prior file two weeks prior. FINRA Short Interest is sourced for the entire market, while XOOMAR’s Short Interest Tracker and its API provide the parsed, time-scaled data.

The Latest File

GameStop's short book fell by over 1.6 million shares to 53,736,062 in the latest settlement. The days-to-cover ratio rose from 16.14 to 17.06, meaning it would take more than 17 average trading sessions to buy back all reported short positions at the same daily volume. The average daily volume used for the calculation fell to 3,150,012 shares from 3,433,961 in the prior file.

The Path of GME's Short Book

The GME short interest stood at 66,882,712 shares at the start of this 12-settlement window on February 13. The latest file, July 31, shows 53,736,062, a total decrease of over 13 million shares within the window. It wasn't a straight line down. XOOMAR's reading shows ten settlements where the short book declined and one, specifically the report for Friday, May 29, where it increased. That lone rise was 1.72%, to 58,930,916 shares, before a series of declines resumed.

Settlement date	Short quantity	Avg daily volume	Days to cover	Change vs prior file
2026-02-13	66,882,712	9,923,959	6.74	3.69%
2026-02-27	65,618,475	4,694,949	13.98	-1.89%
2026-03-13	64,227,044	5,246,169	12.24	-2.12%
2026-03-31 (Tuesday)	62,823,134	6,066,043	10.36	-2.19%
2026-04-15 (Wednesday)	61,907,606	6,610,420	9.37	-1.46%
2026-04-30 (Thursday)	59,374,474	7,005,031	8.48	-4.09%
2026-05-15	57,937,281	13,910,930	4.16	-2.42%
2026-05-29	58,930,916	4,914,100	11.99	1.72%
2026-06-15 (Monday)	57,054,439	6,841,859	8.34	-3.18%
2026-06-30 (Tuesday)	55,856,110	5,196,127	10.75	-2.10%
2026-07-15 (Wednesday)	55,426,276	3,433,961	16.14	-0.77%
2026-07-31 (Friday)	53,736,062	3,150,012	17.06	-3.05%
GME short interest, last 12 settlements. Days to cover = short quantity / average daily volume.

A Rising Cover Period Amid a Falling Bet

The days-to-cover ratio moves on both sides of the equation: the short quantity and average daily volume. For GameStop over this period, the ratio has risen even as the short book shrinks. That's because average volume has also slumped recently. For instance, the file for May 15 showed a days-to-cover of 4.16 as a surge in average volume to nearly 14 million shares swamped the denominator. Since then, volume has tapered sharply while shorts continued to be covered, pushing the ratio higher up to 17.06. The math shows the rising metric is driven by volume changes, not an expansion of the short bet.

The move from a 6.74 ratio in February to the latest 17.06 print is a signal about market activity more than about a bigger short position. Shorts have covered, but the trading volume available to cover them has fallen even faster.

The Most Illiquid Shorts

While days-to-cover is not a forecast and doesn't incorporate borrow costs, high prints signal a theoretical illiquidity risk for shorts. For this file, the most illiquid large-cap bet is IVPAF at 237.36 days to cover. The list is dominated by OTC and international tickers that can have persistent short structures.

Symbol	Short quantity	Avg daily volume	Days to cover	Change vs prior file
IVPAF	109,340,358	460,643	237.36	3.73%
ZIJMF	62,079,139	314,755	197.23	-3.98%
CXMSF	30,423,772	242,654	125.38	-3.42%
HNDAF	24,098,552	203,155	118.62	-0.52%
TCYMF	25,814,919	229,500	112.48	-14.95%
GLATF	26,411,757	332,081	79.53	-9.60%
SMORF	25,695,757	333,333	77.09	-45.80%
BCDRF	37,054,383	488,979	75.78	-0.94%
LUNMF	14,183,251	218,259	64.98	6.54%
ACGBF	13,190,920	213,083	61.91	0.96%
Same liquidity floor as the XOOMAR short-interest hub. Illiquid 999.99 prints are excluded.

Where Short Bets Ballooned the Most

The biggest liquid short increases on this file were steep on a percentage basis but started from low levels. Names like AIQ and AAPD saw short quantity jump by nearly 500% (493.65% and 489.58%, respectively) to 3.5 million and 1.7 million shares. Several of the top increases had days-to-cover ratios at or near 1.00, meaning the bets were sized close to a single average day's volume.

This list, filtered for liquidity, includes a wider view of the biggest jumps. It shows the surge wasn't confined to tiny positions.

AIQ: +493.65% to 3,542,390 shares
AAPD: +489.58% to 1,676,689 shares
SOFX: +480.25% to 1,345,940 shares
ONMD: +425.68% to 1,816,220 shares
CLBK: +353.77% to 19,995,956 shares

These names are subject to the same liquidity filter: average daily volume over 500,000 shares and short quantity over 1 million. The file doesn't explain the reason for the increases, and their days-to-cover prints remain low, showing they don't present immediate liquidity pressure.

How Short Interest is Measured

Methodology matters. FINRA publishes a biweekly consolidated short interest file, and XOOMAR stores the parsed data. The days-to-cover calculation is direct: short quantity divided by the average daily volume. For ranking the most illiquid bets, the hub uses a floor of 200,000 average daily volume to focus on names with at least some liquidity. For spotting the largest increases, a stricter floor of 500,000 ADV is set, plus a short quantity over a million and a change capped at 500% to filter out broken OTC jumps. The numbers are share counts, not dollars, and the changes are versus the prior two-week FINRA report.

The File's Footprint

The data is for July 31, which was a Friday. Short interest shares and days-to-cover are now declared public seven business days after each settlement date. The state of the GME short interest in this window shows a net decline on eleven out of twelve reports, with the sole rising file dated May 29. The next settlement file isn't stored in this window, so there's no date to project and no forecast baked into the current data.