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After a Judicial Committee Anti-Trust Panel hearing where mega-tech CEO’s Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN), Tim Cook of Apple Inc (AAPL), Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc (GOOG, GOOGL) and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Inc (FB) were grilled for several hours on a myriad of topics from anti-competitive practices to protection of personal information they will now face investor scrutiny of their 2^nd quarter earnings. These are some of the most shorted stocks in the U.S. market and used as an overall portfolio Beta hedge and straight out Alpha generator.

The FAANG stocks are five of the top ten most shorted stocks in the domestic U.S. stock market and because of the sheer size of combined short exposure they represent both risk “Alpha” trades and hedging “Beta” trades.

FAANG stocks (FB, AMZN, AAPL, NFLX & GOOGL) were down 4.7% last week, 3.6% on Friday alone, after Amazon.com and Alphabet announced disappointing quarterly results amid overall weakness in the tech sector. While long shareholders incurred large losses from these widely held stocks, short sellers made $1.62 billion in mark-to-market profits last week.

Tesla Inc (TSLA) and the FAANG stocks continue to be some of the largest shorts in the U.S. market, taking five of the top ten spots in the U.S. league table. While Tesla is a momentum, value and convertible arbitrage short, one of the main drivers for the large short interest in the FAANG stocks is their ability to be a “turbocharged” hedge for the long side of a portfolio.

Facebook Inc.’s (FB) stock price declined by 19% on a slower growth outlook and weaker than expected 2^nd quarter ad revenues. Short sellers, who had covered 12 million shares of their short positions since early April, had kept their Facebook short exposure stable over the past week ahead of earnings. The pause in short covering proved prescient as the today’s stock price decline earned short sellers $1.05 billion of mark-to-market profits.

Tracking $1.6 trillion of worldwide short interest in S3’s Blacklight SaaS platform and standalone Black App we can see which shorted securities had the most and least profitable month of April on a mark-to-market P/L basis. I’ll be breaking down the top ten winners and losers in the U.S., Worldwide ex-U.S. and worldwide Exchange Traded Products.