Everyone is now free to go out and buy oil and gold because the fed is too timid to break the back of anyone.
As a percentage of the total float the SI has been basically flat for years so I am not sure if the SI is as big a part of the current rally as one may expect.
It matters for one reason, duration. Shorts are usually short term traders. The long trade heavily consists of the buy and hold institutional crowd. So that 7.4 billion shares that are short, that is almost all short term traders. If you measure that against only the short term bulls, I believe you will see a significant ratio.
I can see the logic I don't see the value. How do we measure "the short term bulls"? More importantly how do we put it into historical context ala a time series?
You are over analyzing. The bottom line is, the sentiment was way too bearish, everyone was trying to pick a top. The hardest trades to make are usually the right ones. And getting long on this rally was definitely hard.
Well here we go folks, yet another record close for the dow today, and another up day for the US equity markets. No down days ever in the land of perfect.