what s the difference between short interest and the short interest ratio 
short interest refers to the total number of shares that have been sold short in a specific security that has not been covered or closed out investors use the metric as a measure of bearish sentiment short interest can be expressed as a percentage of the total shares outstanding or as a ratio of the total shares that a company has available for trading by comparison the sir takes the number of shares held short in a stock and divides the figure by the stock s average daily trading volume investors use this metric to determine how many days it would take to cover all short positions in a stock 