Days to Cover

Days to Cover is a measure of how long it would take short sellers to buy back all the shares they've borrowed and sold. Short sellers bet that a stock's price will fall, so they borrow shares, sell them at today's price, and hope to repurchase them cheaper later. Days to Cover divides the total shorted shares by the average daily trading volume—basically asking: at current trading speeds, how many days until all those shorts need to cover their positions? You'll see this metric when researching heavily shorted stocks, because it hints at potential squeeze risk (rapid price spikes when shorts scramble to buy). For example, if TechCorp has 10 million shorted shares and 1 million shares trade daily, that's roughly 10 days to cover.