UK Short Selling Positions

🔍 What does UK Short Selling Positions do?

It reads the Financial Conduct Authority's net short position register and returns it as clean, typed rows. You get which UK listed company is being shorted, by what percentage of its issued share capital, on what date, refreshed every working day. The fastest way to try it is to press Start with nothing filled in, which returns the whole current register in about a second.

Three files sit behind it and you choose between them with one field. Current is every position open right now. Historic is every position that has closed or dropped out of scope since 2022. Named holders is the FCA's archive of individual disclosures, which runs from 31 October 2012 to 9 July 2026 and carries the fund name against each position.

No account, no API key, no cookie and no browser. The FCA publishes all of it openly and this Actor reads it directly.

📊 What data can I extract?

Every row carries the same 25 fields whichever file it came from, so a current row and an archive row line up in the same spreadsheet.

Field	Type	What it holds
dataset	string	Which FCA file the row came from: current, historic or disclosures
positionHolder	string	The named fund holding the position. Present only on archive rows, null on aggregated rows
companyName	string	The company being shorted, as the FCA publishes its name
isin	string	ISIN of the shorted share, upper cased with spacing removed
positionPercent	number	Net short position as a percentage of issued share capital, to two decimals
positionDate	string	The date the position was held, as YYYY-MM-DD
positionDateRaw	string	The date exactly as published, day first for the CSVs and an Excel serial for the archive
becameHistoricDate	string	When an aggregated position stopped being current, YYYY-MM-DD
becameHistoricDateRaw	string	The same date exactly as published
daysHeldBeforeHistoric	number	Calendar days between the position date and the date it became historic
daysSincePositionDate	number	Calendar days from the position date to the moment of the run
positionClosed	boolean	True where a holder notified a position of zero. Null on aggregated rows
isAggregated	boolean	True where the row sums every holder, false where it is one named holder
isCurrent	boolean	True only for positions open now
disclosureRegime	string	SSR 2025 aggregated or pre-SSR 2025 individual
reportableShare	boolean	Whether the ISIN is on the FCA's current UK reportable shares list. Null if that list could not be read
reportableShareClass	string	Main or Other Class of Shares
reportableShareAddedDate	string	When the share was added to the reportable shares list, YYYY-MM-DD
reportableShareAddedDateRaw	string	The same date exactly as published
reportableShareCompanyName	string	The company name as spelled on the reportable shares list
sourceUrl	string	The FCA file the row was read from
sourceLastModified	string	When the FCA last republished that file, ISO 8601
sourceUpdatedDaily	boolean	Whether that file is still republished every working day
sourceComplete	boolean	Whether the FCA file was read in full on this run
retrievedAt	string	When the row was collected, ISO 8601

Any field can be null. The FCA leaves gaps and a guess in place of a gap is worse than the gap.

💡 Why track net short positions?

Short interest screens. Pull the current register sorted by size and the most heavily shorted UK companies are the first rows. On the day this was written the top of the list ran Vistry Group at 19.98%, Ibstock at 18.26% and Capita at 13.67%.

Position building. Set the percentage band to 1 to 2 and you get the companies where short interest is real but not yet a headline. Run it daily and the moves in and out of that band are your signal.

Company monitoring. Filter to one ISIN and schedule it. Investor relations teams get the aggregate against their own stock in a row, dated, with no manual download.

Story research. The historic file carries every aggregated position back to 2022 with the date it closed, so you can reconstruct how short interest in a company moved through an event.

Fund histories. The named holders archive answers what a specific fund was short and when, across 602 funds, 921 securities and 108,850 disclosures. Filter to one holder to see everything it ever disclosed in the UK.

Reconciliation. Every row carries the ISIN and the FCA's own publication timestamp, so a position file can be joined against the register without matching on company names that are spelled three ways.

🚀 How do I use UK Short Selling Positions?

1. Click Try for free, or add the Actor to your Apify account.
2. Leave every field empty for the whole current register, which is about 420 positions.
3. Or pick a file with Which FCA file to read: current positions, historic positions or the named holder archive.
4. Narrow it down with a company name, an ISIN, a percentage band or a date window. The filters combine.
5. Choose a Sort order. Largest position first is the short interest screen.
6. Press Start. A current run finishes in about a second.
7. Take the results from the Storage tab as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or through the API.
8. Set a schedule for a daily refresh. The FCA republishes each working day from 12:00 London time.

⬇️ Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
dataset	string	current	Which FCA file to read: current, historic or disclosures
company	string	empty	Keep companies whose name contains this text, case insensitive
isin	string	empty	Keep one exact security by ISIN
positionHolder	string	empty	Keep disclosures whose named holder contains this text. Archive only
minPositionPercent	string	empty	Keep positions at or above this percentage
maxPositionPercent	string	empty	Keep positions at or below this percentage
positionDateFrom	string	empty	Earliest position date, YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive
positionDateTo	string	empty	Latest position date, YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive
includeClosedPositions	boolean	true	Keep the zero percent rows that mark a closure
reportableSharesOnly	boolean	false	Keep only shares still on the FCA reportable shares list
sortBy	string	percentDesc	percentDesc, percentAsc, dateDesc, dateAsc, company or holder
maxResults	integer	1000	Hard cap on rows saved, which is also the cap on run cost

Every filter is optional and they all combine. An example that pulls the large positions opened in August 2026:

{
  "dataset": "current",
  "minPositionPercent": "5",
  "positionDateFrom": "2026-08-01",
  "sortBy": "percentDesc",
  "maxResults": 1000
}

And one that pulls a single fund's whole disclosure history in one company:

{
  "dataset": "disclosures",
  "positionHolder": "marshall wace",
  "company": "ocado",
  "sortBy": "dateDesc",
  "maxResults": 1000
}

⬆️ Output

Table view

Company	ISIN	Short %	Position date	Holder	Days old	Open now
Vistry Group PLC	GB0001859296	19.98	2026-08-12	null	4	true
IBSTOCK PLC	GB00BYXJC278	18.26	2026-08-12	null	4	true
CAPITA PLC	GB00BPCT7534	13.67	2026-08-12	null	4	true
OCADO GROUP PLC	GB00B3MBS747	12.09	2026-08-13	null	3	true

JSON

{
  "dataset": "current",
  "positionHolder": null,
  "companyName": "OCADO GROUP PLC",
  "isin": "GB00B3MBS747",
  "positionPercent": 12.09,
  "positionDate": "2026-08-13",
  "positionDateRaw": "13/08/2026",
  "becameHistoricDate": null,
  "becameHistoricDateRaw": null,
  "daysHeldBeforeHistoric": null,
  "daysSincePositionDate": 3,
  "positionClosed": null,
  "isAggregated": true,
  "isCurrent": true,
  "disclosureRegime": "SSR 2025 aggregated",
  "reportableShare": true,
  "reportableShareClass": "Main",
  "reportableShareAddedDate": "2026-07-13",
  "reportableShareAddedDateRaw": "13/07/2026",
  "reportableShareCompanyName": "OCADO GROUP PLC",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/documents/aggregated-current-net-short-positions.csv",
  "sourceLastModified": "2026-08-14T10:50:57.000Z",
  "sourceUpdatedDaily": true,
  "sourceComplete": true,
  "retrievedAt": "2026-08-16T15:48:13.358Z"
}

📅 What the FCA actually publishes, and what it does not

This matters more than any feature in the list above, because the UK regime changed in 2026 and a lot of writing about UK short selling is now out of date.

Current and historic positions are anonymous. The Short Selling Regulations 2025 took effect on 13 July 2026. Since then the FCA publishes the aggregate net short position in each company and states plainly that individual positions are anonymised and not disclosed. So positionHolder is null on every current and historic row, and it is null because the information does not exist rather than because this Actor failed to find it. Asking for a holder search against those files finishes the run with the reason in its status message and an empty dataset, instead of quietly returning everything.

The named holder archive is history and it stops. The FCA still hosts the individual disclosure report from the previous regime. It runs from 31 October 2012 to 9 July 2026, holds 108,850 disclosures from 602 funds across 921 securities, and it will not grow again. This Actor reads it in full and says on every row that it is not updated daily. It is the right source for a fund history and the wrong source for what is short today.

Positions are published on a T+2 basis. A position dated today appears in the register two working days later, so the freshest positionDate you will see is a couple of days behind. That is the FCA's schedule, not a lag in this Actor.

The reporting floor is 0.2%. Anything smaller is not notifiable and is not in the register at any threshold you set.

A position of 0% is a closure. In the named holder archive a zero row is how a fund told the FCA it had closed out, which is why those rows exist and why includeClosedPositions is a switch rather than a cleanup.

Dates are read as day first. The FCA writes 10/08/2026 and means 10 August. This Actor parses the calendar by hand rather than handing the string to a date parser, which would read it as 8 October. Your own date filters go in as YYYY-MM-DD, and a day first date is rejected with an explanation rather than guessed at.

🧮 Coverage, limits and memory

File	Rows today	Republished	Named holders
Current aggregated positions	420	every working day from 12:00	no
Historic aggregated positions	2,948	every working day from 12:00	no
Named holder archive	108,850	no, frozen at 10 July 2026	yes
UK reportable shares list	1,381	monthly, first working day	not applicable

The reportable shares list is read on every run to fill the reportableShare columns. If it cannot be read the run carries on and those five columns are null, because an unchecked share is not the same as a share that is out of scope.

The named holder archive is a 3.1MB workbook whose worksheet expands to 25MB. This Actor streams it and never holds it whole, and it keeps only the rows your maxResults asked for. At the default 128MB of memory it comfortably returns about 25,000 archive rows. To pull all 108,850 in one run, raise the run memory to 512MB. A current or historic run needs nothing above 128MB at any setting.

⏱️ How long does a run take?

Measured on real runs, so you know what normal looks like and can tell it apart from a run that has stalled.

Positions returned	Typical run time
50, filtered out of the current register	about 3 seconds
420, the whole current register	2 to 5 seconds
3,960, the whole historic file	about 5 seconds
92,060, the named holder archive at 512 MB	about 7 minutes

The first three rows are all the same shape of work. The FCA publishes current and historic positions as one small file each, so a run is a single download followed by filtering and sorting in memory. Four thousand rows therefore cost barely more than four hundred, and filters for company, ISIN, holder, percentage band or date do not slow a run down at all, because the file was already read.

The named holder archive is the exception and the last row is why. It is a 3.1 MB workbook whose worksheet expands to about 25 MB, streamed row by row rather than held whole, and at the top end that is minutes rather than seconds. Cap it with maxResults if you only want the top of the archive, and see the memory note in the coverage section above before pulling all of it. On the other three files the first few seconds of any run are the container starting rather than the work, which is most of the run.

A run is never silently stuck. The download and the row count are both logged, and positions are written to the dataset in batches as they are prepared rather than held back to the end. A filter that matches nothing ends successfully with an empty dataset and the reason in its status message.

Set the run timeout to suit the size of the ask. This Actor's default is 3600 seconds, which is comfortably more than the largest run in the table above (1,000 positions takes about 1 minute). You are charged per delivered result rather than per minute, so a generous timeout costs you nothing and a tight one risks losing the run's work. Lower it only if you want a hard ceiling on how long a scheduled run may sit.

💰 How much does it cost?

You are charged per position saved, and the charge happens before the rows are handed over, so you never receive rows you were not billed for and you are never billed for rows you did not receive. If your run cost cap runs out part way through a batch, the run keeps what was paid for, says so in the log and finishes successfully.

maxResults is therefore the cost control. Set it to 50 and a run can never cost more than 50 positions plus the run start, whatever you filter on.

Some worked examples at the current price. A daily monitor on one company returns 1 row. A whole current register run returns about 420. A full historic pull returns 2,948. Check the pricing panel on this Actor's page for the live per position price and the discount tiers, because that panel is the only figure that is guaranteed to be today's.

🔌 Integrations

Schedule the Actor to run every working day at 12:30 London time and the current register lands in the same dataset every day with no manual download. Connect it to Google Sheets, Airtable, Zapier, Make or Slack from the Integrations tab, or send a webhook on run completion so a position crossing a threshold reaches you rather than waiting to be checked. Results are available as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML and RSS through the Apify API, and Apify's monitoring will tell you if a run ever fails.

The Actor also has a full output schema and runs on limited permissions, so an AI agent can discover it and chain it through the Apify MCP server without any wiring.

🔗 Using UK Short Selling Positions with the Apify API

Start a run and wait for the results in one call:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/spookyweb~uk-short-selling-positions/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"dataset":"current","minPositionPercent":"5","sortBy":"percentDesc","maxResults":100}'

Or start it and collect the dataset later:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/spookyweb~uk-short-selling-positions/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"dataset":"disclosures","positionHolder":"marshall wace","maxResults":5000}'

$curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?token=YOUR_TOKEN&format=csv"

In JavaScript with the Apify client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('spookyweb/uk-short-selling-positions').call({
  dataset: 'current',
  isin: 'GB00B3MBS747',
  sortBy: 'dateDesc',
  maxResults: 50,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

❓ FAQ

Who is short a particular UK company right now?

Nobody can tell you, and neither can any other source, because the FCA stopped publishing it. Under the Short Selling Regulations 2025 only the aggregate short position in a company is published. Set dataset to current and an ISIN to get that aggregate. For named funds you need the archive, which ends on 9 July 2026.

How often does the data update?

The FCA republishes the current and historic files every working day from 12:00 London time, and this Actor reads them live on every run. The sourceLastModified field on each row tells you exactly when the FCA last touched the file it came from.

Why is my position date a few days old?

Positions are published on a T+2 basis, so a position held on Monday appears in the register on Wednesday at the earliest. The daysSincePositionDate field makes the gap explicit on every row.

Why is positionHolder null?

Because the row came from an aggregated file, where the identity is not published. Set dataset to disclosures for named holders. If you set a holder search against an aggregated file the run stops and explains this rather than returning unfiltered rows.

Can I get the whole named holder archive in one run?

Yes. Set dataset to disclosures and maxResults to 200000, and raise the run memory to 512MB. All 108,850 disclosures come back in one dataset.

What does a 0% position mean?

It is a closure. A fund notifies the FCA that its position has fallen to zero, and that notification is published like any other. Those rows are marked with positionClosed set to true, and includeClosedPositions turns them off.

Why does an ISIN sometimes show reportableShare as false?

Because the share is no longer on the FCA's current UK reportable shares list, usually because the company delisted or moved out of scope. It is common in the archive and rare in the current file. Where the list could not be read at all the field is null rather than false.

Does it need an API key or an account with the FCA?

No. Every file this Actor reads is published openly by the FCA with no key, no registration and no cookie.

Do I need a proxy?

No. This is a plain HTTP read of static published files and it uses no proxy and no browser.

What happens if my filters match nothing?

The run succeeds with zero rows and the log tells you which filter to widen. A search that legitimately matches nothing is an answer, not a failure, so a scheduled monitor will not alert you over a quiet day.

Which UK companies are the most shorted?

Run it with no filters and sortBy set to percentDesc. The first rows are the answer for that day, and because you get the date on every row you can tell how fresh each number is.

⚖️ Is it legal to collect FCA short position data?

The FCA publishes this data specifically so it can be used. The aggregate net short position report, the historic report and the UK reportable shares list are all official public disclosures under the UK short selling regime, published in machine readable formats on the FCA website with no access control. This Actor reads those published files exactly as a browser would, adds no authentication and bypasses nothing.

The FCA site is subject to Crown copyright, which permits reuse. There is no personal data in the aggregated files at all. The named holder archive contains firm names that the FCA itself published for public disclosure, which is the entire purpose of a disclosure regime, and a small number of individual names disclosed under the same rules. Nothing is inferred, enriched or joined against anything the FCA did not publish.

As always, what you do with financial data is your responsibility. If you are acting on it, check the FCA's own notification and disclosure page for the current regime and the publication schedule.

👍 Your feedback

Found a bug, or want a field that is not here? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor and it will be read. If you need a different UK regulatory or company dataset scraped and turned into an API, say so there too, because that is exactly the kind of thing this account builds.

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