Specialists / Public Short Sales

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

The Specialist / Public Short Ratio is a market sentiment indicator. It is calculated by dividing the volume of the weekly short sales made by stock exchange specialists (members) and those made by the public (the "crowd"), by the volume of total short sales. Specialists are responsible for balancing incoming buy and sell orders and they have to short sometimes heavily to stabilize the markets in the stocks in which they specialize. They don't  necessarily have to be bearish at that time, but it usually turns out later that they were right because the public or the so called "crowd" was wrong. The reverse is true in declining markets. The public is doing the selling and shorting and the specialists have to buy to maintain orderly markets even if they are not bullish at all. It is therefore no wonder that the specialist business is passed on from one generation to the next; it is the most risk-free way to make a lot of money in the financial markets.