zerohedge’s claim, “14th year in a row”: the GS Most Short basket beats the GS Hedge Fund VIP basket (consensus longs) — +43% vs +23% over the year to 08/2026, with the gap opening in vertical squeeze legs (per the Bloomberg chart), not steadily.
Why crowded shorts outperform in melt-ups: heavily-shorted names carry a built-in buyer (every short must eventually cover), squeezes force that buying exactly when prices rise, and retail flow deliberately targets high-short-interest names post-2021. The practical readings: single-name shorting in a liquidity-driven market has negative expected value even when the fundamental thesis is right; and junk-beats-quality legs are themselves a speculative-froth gauge, same family as Call-volume extremes. Caveat the framing: “14 years straight” is a suspiciously clean streak quoted without the receipt for the earlier years, and basket composition resets — check before treating it as data (Check the stat against its own chart).
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