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[bewildered]

Do any of you investors know what it means when a stock's "percentage held by institutions" is above 100%?

A lot of blue chips are 40-70% held by institutions-- that makes sense.  But if I buy a stock that, according to Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance, has 135% of its shares held by institutions, then what am I actually buying?

[aandsdean]

Interesting question.

What's the short percentage?  I suppose shares being sold short could be counted as held by two different institutions at the same time (the lender of the shares and the seller).  This might work if you had an issue with essentially no noninstitutional holdings and a high short percentage.  Hmmm....

[bewildered]

Interesting question.

What's the short percentage?  I suppose shares being sold short could be counted as held by two different institutions at the same time (the lender of the shares and the seller).  This might work if you had an issue with essentially no noninstitutional holdings and a high short percentage.  Hmmm....

That's a thought.  I'm afraid I can't answer your question, though, because I don't have a specific example in mind at the moment.  I have noticed just a few examples over the past few months, and it just occurred to me to post this today.

But in general, I'm nervous about buying a stock where more than 100% of the shares are... well, anything.  And I'm also nervous about buying a high-yield stock when the dividend payout ratio is over 100%.  But I think I have good reason for the latter nervousness, whereas I just don't understand the former scenario at all.

[charlesr]

My first thought was that Yahoo made a mistake.  I've seen other mistakes on YahooFinance.  My second thought relates to the denominator. Is it % of outstanding shares, in which case it is probably a mistake; or is it % of float (publicly-traded shares), in which case it could be legitimate, albeit unusual?