I used Fintel to gauge the short interest of any given stock because I thought they were reliable. However, with the latest round of orchestrated "flash crashes" being done on meme stocks, and Fintel actually reporting lower "Short Volume Ratio" afterwards, I set out to find out just what the hell is going on.
Turns out, Fintel gets their Short Volume figure from FINRA's Daily Short Sale Volume Files. Through that webpage, you can find short volume data for any stock for any given day. For example, today 2021-03-22, FINRA maintains that GME had a short volume of 2,358,752 with a total volume of 3,843,634. And according to FINRA, Total Volume is defined as "share volume of all executed trades during regular trading hours."
​
FINRA Daily Short Sale Volume File Format Legend
Alright, that's cool and all but what is wrong? Well, the problem is the Total Volume figure reported by FINRA is completely off and the fact that services like Fintel uses FINRA's short volume data to calculate short volume ratio presents inaccurate data to the public.
For example, Fintel is currently reporting a 23% Short Volume Ratio for GME as of 2021-03-22. The way they calculate Short Volume Ratio is simply take the Short Volume figure from FINRA (2,358,752) divided by the Total Volume. Whao, but Fintel is showing 10,054,700 as the Total Volume for GME, what?
Okay, let see then..
Yahoo Finance shows GME had a volume of 9,573,686 on 2021-03-22.
WeBull shows GME had a volume of 10,060,000 on 2021-03-22.
Robinhood shows GME had a volume of 10,060,000 on 2021-03-22.
Fidelity shows GME had a volume of 10,061,505 on 2021-03-22.
You get the picture. Four sources confirmed that GME had a total volume of \~10M on 2021-03-22. Why the hell is FINRA reporting only 3.8M as the total volume? YES, I am aware that FINRA breaks down their report by markets. I specifically did the analysis based on their "consolidated" data across markets B (NASDAQ TRF Chicago), Q (NASDAQ TRF Carteret) and N (NYSE TRF) So, what the hell?
Once I start questioning that, I had to check FINRA's short volume report for a longer time span for GME. Turns out, FINRA has been under-reporting total volume for all tickers since.. ever. Here I compare what FINRA is reporting vs what Yahoo and Fidelity are reporting. (Blue: FINRA, Red: Yahoo and Yellow: Fidelity)
[ GME Total Trading Volume as reported by FINRA, Yahoo & Fidelity \(2021-01-01 to 2021-03-22\) \[Check sources below raw data\]](https://preview.redd.it/wj18e4vpcpo61.png?width=1554&format=png&auto=webp&s=ecf1121443100b84f7e78e92b7c9c9ceafe96f44)
As you can see, Yahoo and Fidelity pretty much align 100% on what the total volume is, but FINRA \_never\_ reported even remotely close to what others are reporting. Again, keep in mind the FINRA data I used in this analysis is consolidated across markets.