A short squeeze is when too many investors bet that a stock’s decline backfires, and even a modest rally can force short sellers to buy shares back, pushing the price higher and creating a self-feeding climb. That setup is now worth watching in small modular reactor stocks, like Oklo (OKLO).
Short sellers have made more than $2 billion betting against three small modular reactor companies like Oklo, NuScale Power Corporation (SMR), and NANO Nuclear Energy (NNE) over the past year, according to S3 Partners, as the nuclear industry’s once-hot stocks lost billions in combined market values. Yet the bearish trade remains crowded. About 16% of Oklo’s outstanding shares are still out on loan, a proxy for short selling. OKLO stock has slipped this year as concerns over the small modular reactor industry have weighed on investor sentiment, leaving the stock under pressure and the short trade firmly in focus.
