Member/Public Short Sales (NYSE Members Report)

The NYSE Members Report is compiled by the SEC and issued about two weeks after the applicable date.

The Member/Public Short Sales are calculated by dividing the volume of the weekly short sales made by stock exchange members (all the well-known Wall Street broker firms) and those made by the public (the so called "crowd"), by the volume of total short sales. This indicator is a useful tool to determine what the experts are doing. If specialists, floor traders and other members of the New York Stock Exchange are shorting heavily the market is usually ripe for a correction. On the other hand, if they are doing relatively little shorting it is most likely that the market has hit bottom, especially if public short sales and odd-lot short sales increase at the same time.