SHORT INTEREST:

Short Interest is important (in my book) because it tells you the total number of shares that have been sold short that haven't been covered or closed out for other reasons. It can be another indicator of investors sentiment on the market. If you know what the short sellers are doing, you can have a relative idea of the upcoming direction of the chart. If there is a ton of shorts, there is always the possibility of them being wrong, and when they are wrong they have to cover, and when enough of them cover that raises demand and thus price moves up :D. Key terms associated with short interest also include short squeezes(short sellers trying to replace their borrowed stock), short interest percentage and ratio. The ratio can be thought of as the "days-to-cover" ratio, because it determines how many days a short seller has to cover their positions if positive news comes out. The ratio is equal to the short interest divided by average daily volume. The short interest percentage tells you "what the short sellers are doing" because when the percentage goes up, that signifies the sentiment of the stock is that it should decrease in price. So that means you should probably check the news on the stock and figure out why people are thinking of shorting it.