According to Forbes.com, Verisign Inc (NASD: VRSN) is now Most Shorted Stock in S&P 500 based on most recent short interest data has been released by the NASDAQ for the 10.15.2014 settlement date.

According to nasdaq.com there are 19,441,435 shares of Verisign Stock being shorted as of 10.15.14 but more shares have been shorted in the past.

24,641,765 of Verisign were shorted back on December 31,  2013 and 23,218,994 back on March 31, 2014.

There are about 125 Million shares of Verisign outstanding, meaning that about 17% of the shares are being shorted.

When you short shares of a company you’re basically betting the share price will fall.

You can then buy shares to close your position.

While you are shorting shares you are responsible for paying the same dividend to the shareholders.

The short figures come by looking at the underlying components of the S&P 500 by “days to cover” metric which considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares typically traded. The number of shares short is then compared to the average daily volume, in order to calculate the total number of trading days it would take to close out all of the open short positions if every share traded represented a short position being closed.

Them previous S&P 500 company to hold that position, Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) is now in the #2 spot.

“The “days to cover” at 10/15/2014 was 21.48 for VRSN, and 19.36 for CVC; this compares to the average across all S&P 500 components of 3.36 (down from the average back on the 09/30/2014 settlement date of 4.25).

A stock with a high “days to cover” value compared to its peers would be considered to have a higher level of short interest as compared to those peers. This could mean short sellers are using the stock to hedge a long bet elsewhere, or could also mean that short sellers believe the price of the stock will decline.

When short sellers eventually cover their positions, by definition there must be buying activity because a share that is currently sold short must be purchased to be covered.

So investors tend to keep an eye on that “days to cover” metric, because a high value could predict a sharper price increase should the company put out some unexpectedly good news — short sellers might rush to cover positions, and if the “days to cover” number is high, it is more difficult to close those positions without sending the stock higher until the higher price produces enough sellers to generate the necessary volume.”