It just hit me that over $10B short, for a company whose market cap is $47B, is ridiculous! I already knew it was ridiculous, but sometimes numbers like this hit you between the eyes.
For people thinking about what percentage of the float is short, I want to remind you of something. Someone (probably in another thread, since I'm having trouble finding it) pointed out that the short borrowing shares and selling them effectively increases the available float. But it's not even as simple as that! The buyer of those shares can't tell the difference from real shares. (Actually, they are real shares; it's the lender who knows that he isn't currently holding them. But never mind that.) In particular,
the new owner can lend them out to shorts! This is one of the beautiful things (to me anyway
) about a true short squeeze. Some of the shares will have effectively been loaned out multiple times.
Alice lends to Steve, who sells them to Bob.
Bob lends them to Stephanie, who sells them to Charlie.
Charlie lends them to Sam, who sells them to David.
Now the price starts to rise, and Alice decides it might be nice to take some profit, so she sells her shares and her broker recalls them from Steve, who has to buy shares to cover, forcing the price up some more. Alice is not desperate to cash in, but Steve has no choice in the matter, so even though the sale and purchase sort of balance out, it really does force the price up. At the same time, the available float has just gone down a bit because of those virtual shares going away. So Bob thinks "Hmmm, this is going up nicely, maybe I'll take some money off the table," and around we go.