The 10 Most Shorted ASX Stocks — July 2026

The 10 Most Shorted ASX Stocks — July 2026

This is the ASX short list as it stands in July 2026: the ten companies where short sellers hold the largest positions as a percentage of issued capital, drawn from official ASIC short-position data. ASIC aggregates every reported net short position and publishes it on a T+4 basis — four business days behind the market — so the latest reliable figures here run to 6 July 2026.

The composition tells its own story. Three of the ten are uranium stocks. Two are consumer discretionary names with structural questions hanging over them. Two are healthcare companies priced for execution. One 22.81% position towers over everything else on the exchange.

This list is a snapshot. The live top-100 updates every trading day.

The ten most shorted stocks on the ASX

Short interest as a percentage of issued capital, ASIC data to 6 July 2026:

#	Ticker	Company	Short interest	Theme
1	LOT	Lotus Resources	22.81%	Uranium developer
2	DMP	Domino's Pizza Enterprises	13.86%	Franchise economics
3	DRO	DroneShield	11.94%	Defence tech valuation
4	TLX	Telix Pharmaceuticals	11.90%	Radiopharma execution
5	BOE	Boss Energy	11.77%	Uranium producer
6	4DX	4DMedical	11.48%	Pre-profit medtech
7	FLT	Flight Centre	11.43%	Travel margins
8	PDN	Paladin Energy	11.39%	Uranium producer
9	CAR	CAR Group	11.32%	Classifieds vs rates
10	TWE	Treasury Wine Estates	10.92%	Wine / China re-entry

The gap between first and second place — nearly 9 percentage points — is the widest spread at the top of the list in years. Lotus isn't just the most shorted stock on the ASX; it's the most shorted by a distance.

Why the market is short each name

A note on framing before the theses: these are the market's most crowded bear cases, not a verdict. High short interest means sophisticated investors are paying borrow costs to bet against a company — it doesn't mean they're right, and crowded positions can unwind violently when they're wrong. Read these as arguments, not conclusions.

The uranium cluster: LOT, BOE, PDN

Three uranium names in one top-10 is a sector-level position, not three coincidences. The common thread is a soft spot uranium price meeting a wave of new supply: developers restarting mothballed mines and producers ramping output into a market that hasn't rewarded them for it.

Lotus Resources (LOT) — 22.81% — carries the most extreme position on the exchange, and it's been built fast: short interest has risen 12.4pp in 90 days, from around 10.4% in early April. Lotus is restarting the Kayelekera mine in Malawi, and the bear case is the classic developer squeeze — restart capital, ramp-up risk and a contracted-versus-spot pricing gap, all against a weak spot price.

Boss Energy (BOE) — 11.77% — has been a top-10 fixture through its Honeymoon ramp-up in South Australia, where the market has questioned how quickly the in-situ recovery operation reaches nameplate. Notably, the position is being unwound: shorts have covered roughly 2.3pp in the past fortnight, from above 14% in late June.

Paladin Energy (PDN) — 11.39% — faces the same argument at Langer Heinrich in Namibia, where the ramp-up of the restarted mine has been slower and lumpier than the original guidance implied. Production consistency, not the uranium thesis itself, is what the shorts are pricing.

Consumer discretionary: DMP, FLT

Domino's Pizza Enterprises (DMP) — 13.86% — is the market's longest-running franchise-economics argument: store closures across Japan and France, strained franchisee profitability, and the question of whether the store-count growth story that justified the old multiple ever comes back. The position has been slowly unwinding — down 1.4pp over 90 days from above 15% — which reads as bears banking profits rather than a change of heart.

Flight Centre (FLT) — 11.43% — is a structural position: thin leisure margins, the long online migration of travel booking, and scepticism that corporate travel ever fully recovers its pre-pandemic economics. At –0.6pp over 90 days the position has barely moved — a settled disagreement between the company and its bears. It's part of a broader crowding in discretionary retail that has also swept up fast-growing food names re-rated to demanding multiples.

Healthcare and biotech: TLX, 4DX

Telix Pharmaceuticals (TLX) — 11.90% — is a valuation-versus-execution position. Telix's prostate-cancer imaging franchise made it one of the ASX's great growth stories, and the short case centres on what's already priced in: competition in imaging, the leap from diagnostics into therapeutics, and a pipeline that must keep clearing regulatory hurdles to justify the multiple.

4DMedical (4DX) — 11.48% — is a more conventional pre-profit medtech position: a lung-imaging platform with real technology but a long road to reimbursement-driven revenue, funded by a cash balance that shorts expect will need topping up before the adoption curve arrives.

Classifieds vs the rate cycle: CAR

CAR Group (CAR) — 11.32% — is the odd one out: a high-quality, profitable market leader carrying double-digit short interest. The position is about price, not the business — a premium multiple on cyclical vehicle-classifieds earnings, plus large offshore bets in the US and Brazil, at a point in the rate cycle where discretionary big-ticket demand is the swing variable.

Wine: TWE

Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) — 10.92% — hinges on China. The removal of tariffs reopened the market that once drove Penfolds' economics, and the bulls are paying for a full recovery. The short case is that the re-entry is slower and more competitive than the recovery narrative assumes, while the US commercial wine portfolio keeps dragging.

How to read this list

A few mechanics matter before drawing conclusions from any of these numbers:

• The data is four days old by design. ASIC aggregates position reports and publishes on a T+4 schedule, so this list reflects positioning as at 6 July, not today. During fast-moving events the direction of travel matters more than the level — our guide to the T+4 delay covers what that lag does and doesn't hide.
• These are net positions. A fund short 5% and long 3% of the same stock reports the net 2%. What you see is genuine directional exposure, not gross borrow.
• The denominator is issued capital. Short interest here is a percentage of all shares on issue, not free float. Stocks with large strategic holders can be more crowded than the headline number suggests.
• Reporting has a floor. Positions only need reporting once they exceed A$100,000 in value or 0.01% of issued capital (whichever is less) — only the tail of genuinely tiny positions is invisible.

For the full framework — what counts as high, how positions build and unwind, and squeeze mechanics — see how to read short interest data or the glossary.

Track the list live

Every name above has a live page with its full short-interest trajectory, price action and news:

• Lotus Resources (LOT) — the 22.81% outlier
• Domino's Pizza Enterprises (DMP)
• Boss Energy (BOE) and Paladin Energy (PDN) — the uranium cluster
• Telix Pharmaceuticals (TLX)

Or start from the live top-100 and the industry view to see where the bear positions are concentrating next.

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This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Short-position figures are derived from official ASIC data published on a T+4 basis and are accurate as at 6 July 2026. High short interest reflects the positioning of reporting short sellers, not a prediction of returns. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.