Electric vehicle pioneer, Tesla, and the granddaddy of mass-produced motor manufacturing, Ford, were among the most shorted large-cap stocks in the Americas during 2023, according to a new report by Hazeltree.

The alternative asset industry treasury and operations technology specialist's 2023 Year in Review report lists the top five securities most shorted by hedge funds in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions in the large-, mid-, and small-cap ranges.

Online retailers Wayfair and Etsy featured in the top-five most shorted mid-cap stocks in the Americas, along with semiconductor specialist Wolfspeed, Bloom Energy, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings.

While Tesla, Ford, and Wayfair all featured among the most shorted stocks of 2022, this year's America's small-cap most shorted list featured a completely new top five including Sunnova, Fisker, and 3D Systems.

In EMEA, the only most-shorted stock to have appeared in last year's list was Delivery Hero, with Siemens Healthineers, Universal Music, Fastighets, Alstom, Rentokil, Ocado Group, Pets at Home and Meyer Burger all among those making their 'debuts' in 2023.

In APAC meanwhile, the large-cap list also featured a completely new list of companies, topped by Commonwealth Bank of Australia, while Rakuten, Sharp and Tokyo Electric, who also featured in last year's list, were the three most-shorted mid-cap stocks. Money Forward topped the small-cap most shorted list, having also featured in last year's top five.

The data sourced in this report comes from Hazeltree’s proprietary securities finance platform, and covers approximately 15,000 global equities across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The data is aggregated and anonymised from the contributing Hazeltree community of hedge funds.