"Successful investing is about recognizing the widest gaps between fair value and present value." --Steven Jon Kaplan

BABY DONE, MAMA NEXT (November 27, 2022): All we really need to know we learned in kindergarten, including the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 2021 was Goldilocks and 2022 was Baby Bear, so 2023 will be Mama Bear and 2024 will be Papa Bear. If you can remember this then you will invest far better than most grownups.

2022 was a classic first year of a bear market with familiar themes from similar past bear markets.

Bear markets are much more similar to each other than bull markets. We experienced a large-cap growth stock bubble one year ago which was very similar to the bubbles of September 1929, January 1973, and March 2020. Just as in those three previous periods from the past century, the large-cap growth shares which caused the bubble in the first place mostly dropped in 2022 about twice as much as the average U.S. stock during the past year just as they had done in 2000. We also had three sharp bounces along the way, including the current one which began around the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2022. It is therefore logical to assume that 2023 will be similar to a year like 2001, with generally steeper losses during each downtrend along with stronger bounces in between downtrends and probably with a moderately larger total loss for 2023 compared with 2022.

Throughout 2022 the U.S. dollar, emerging-market securities, and highly-speculative assets (think cryptocurrencies) also behaved as they generally do during the first year of major bear markets.

VIX and TLT varied from the usual script throughout 2022.

Two interesting differences from analogous past bear markets included 1) the failure of VIX to reach 40 throughout 2022; and 2) the dramatic weakness for U.S. Treasuries and their funds including TLT which dropped about twice as much as they usually would during the first downward phase of a bear market. Since we had more net inflows into the U.S. stock market in 2021 than during 2001 through 2020 combined (not a misprint), presumably these tardy buyers included many less-experienced investors who are not familiar with bear markets.

I expect U.S. Treasuries and VIX to surge sharply higher during the first half of 2023, partly to compensate for their overdone 2022 weaknesses.

In a bear market you can make money selling short on the way down while purchasing U.S. Treasuries and gold/silver mining shares along with other deeply-oversold securities near each intermediate-term bottom.

Selling short the most-overpriced U.S. large-cap equity funds will likely continue to be a winning approach which you can enhance by periodically selling covered puts against these whenever VIX is beginning another retreat. This can be enhanced by adding to the most undervalued long positions whenever there is the least insider selling and the greatest outflows by the least-experienced investors. U.S. Treasuries and gold/silver mining shares in particular tend to enjoy net gains even with sharp corrections during these kinds of bear markets; look at a chart of VUSTX (long-term Treasuries) or $HUI (gold/silver mining shares) from 2000 through 2003. I have therefore been adding to both of these sectors during their most depressed periods of 2022.

Closed-end funds often provide outsized bargains during intermediate- and long-term bear market bottoming patterns.

Some investors aren't as familiar with closed-end funds as they are with open-end or exchange-traded funds. Especially during bear markets, closed-end funds are often sold by those who are disappointed or discouraged or who are otherwise emotionally unhappy about holding anything which has dropped for two years or longer. This causes many closed-end funds to sell at higher discounts to net asset value than they experience during bull markets.

In February 2009, near the end of the severe 2007-2009 bear market, I went to Cefa.com and ranked all closed-end funds from highest discount to lowest. By the middle of the ninth page the discount finally dropped below 20%. When I did the same test in January 2010, less than a year later but when fear of losing more money had been replaced by fear of missing out on additional gains, the discount dropped below 20% halfway down the very first page. This means that the number of closed-end funds with high discounts was 17 times as high in February 2009 as it was in January 2010.

It is especially likely that the next market bottom following a "Mama Bear" retreat, perhaps around the middle of 2023, could be accompanied by very high discounts for some worthwhile closed-end funds. Select those where the fund manager(s) have their own money in the fund, where they have been managing the fund for several years or longer, which have relatively low expense ratios, and which rely on value investing principles rather than using leverage or other financial tricks to enhance their performance.

Value investing is once again taking over from growth as these major groups take turns outperforming through the decades.

The following chart highlights the see-saw behavior of value vs. growth investing since 1975:

I expect value shares to lose much less than growth shares on the way down for a couple of years, just as value had lost much less overall in 2022, and to gain substantially more on the way up for five or six years during the next major bull market (2025 through 2030, approximately).

Differentiation is clearly underway.

In my last update I forecast that investors would begin to differentiate among sectors, so that not all shares would go up or down by similar percentages. This has been increasingly prevalent in recent months as gold mining and silver mining shares and some emerging markets have been far outgaining large-cap U.S. growth favorites from 2020-2021. Part of the critical shift from growth to value will be the increasing outperformance of small caps versus large caps, emerging markets versus U.S. securities, mining shares versus technology, and in general the big winners of 2000-2008 trouncing the big winners from 2009-2021.

It is okay to be a Boglehead with assets which may have completed their cycle bottoms including government bonds and gold/silver mining shares. It's not okay to be a Boglehead with SPY, QQQ, or any collection of previous large-cap U.S. growth favorites.

Why did U.S. large-cap growth stocks perform so well in 2021? It wasn't because their profits increased faster than the profits of other sectors. The primary reason by far is that we had the biggest-ever inflow of inexperienced investors in 2021 who in many cases had never invested in anything before. Being unfamiliar with the financial markets, they invested in names they knew from their everyday lives regardless of how overpriced they had become, and therefore created unsustainable bubbles. Just as a hangover must result from having far too much alcohol, 2022-2024 is the inevitable morning-after resolution of 2021. All of those big-name U.S. technology shares have to go back to fair value and probably well below, since bear markets usually end with an average 30% to 50% discount to fair value for these shares.

Dollar-cost averaging is not a worthwhile approach for any overpriced asset class. You might lose less on the way down but it will still represent a huge overall loss.

I am gradually adding to my short positions and reducing my long positions during the upcoming month to restore their balance from the middle of August 2022.

At the end of September and the beginning of October 2022 I sold covered puts and added significantly to all of my long positions in order to create a much heavier weighting of longs versus shorts compared with their mid-August interrelationship. Now that VIX has retreated almost all the way to 20, I plan to use the next few weeks, especially shortly after the opening bell into all upward spikes, to progressively reduce my long positions except for U.S. Treasuries and gold/silver mining shares and to add to my short positions in XLI, XLE, SMH, QQQ, and XLK. You can't make as big a percentage gain by selling short as you can by being long, but in a bear market the most consistent gains will almost always be on the short side.

XLI and XLE are new short positions, with SMH possibly joining them soon.

I began to sell short XLE when it had first reached 93 a couple of weeks ago, and I have been more recently selling short XLI at 101 and above. Both of these sectors are among those which have more than doubled from their respective March 2020 bottoms, have experienced intense selling of their components by top corporate executives, have enjoyed massive net inflows in recent weeks, and frequently climb shortly after the opening bell most days which is when the least-experienced investors do a large percentage of their total trading. SMH has experienced a sharp bounce in recent weeks so I may begin selling it short soon. If QQQ approaches 300 and especially if it surpasses that level, it is also worth adding to my already-existing position.

I'll take the over on the duration of this bear market.

Many investors believe that either the current U.S. equity bear market has ended or that it will terminate within a year or so. In my opinion that's not likely and I'll happily take the "over" on that bet. The earliest the current bear market could end, based upon the experience with all past lengthy bull markets (the bull market ending in January 2022 had begun in March 2009), would be in the summer of 2024 and that is probably too early by some unknown number of months.

I'm sure that by the time the current bear market has ended, I'll be losing plenty of money on the long side from having gotten invested far too soon and too high.

Old-fashioned savers can get their best deals from U.S. government bonds, especially U.S. Treasuries of 26 weeks, 52 weeks, 2 years, and 3 years until maturity.

Most investors are unaware that U.S. Treasuries have been sporting their highest yields since the summer of 2007. You can get over 4.7% on some securities and over 4% even on the shortest 4-week Treasuries. A good place to do this is TreasuryDirect.gov which charges no fees and allows you to participate in the same auctions as multi-billion-dollar institutions.

The bottom line: 2023 will resemble 2022 but with larger percentage pullbacks, bigger rebounds, and outperformance by U.S. Treasuries and gold/silver mining shares.

As we transition from the first to the second year of a three-year U.S. equity bear market we are likely to have a similar transition as we had experienced in 2000 to 2001. Mama Bear will rip apart large-cap U.S. growth shares, but will be considerably gentler to safe-haven assets including U.S. Treasuries along with gold mining and silver mining shares; Baby Bear in his inexperience treated almost all assets the same (i.e., not with care). In addition to selling short, put lots of money into 26-week, 52-week, 2-year, and 3-year U.S. Treasuries which have enjoyed their highest yields since the summer of 2007.

Disclosure of current holdings:

Here is my current asset allocation as of the close on Wednesday, November 23, 2022:

TIAA(Traditional)/VMFXX/FZDXX/Savings/Checking long: 30.97%;

XLK short (all shorts currently unhedged): 18.84%;

QQQ short: 6.71%;

XLE short: 4.90%;

XLI short: 0.64% (November 25 close);

TSLA short: 0.35%;

GDXJ long: 10.40%;

ASA long: 5.93%;

GDX long: 2.74%;

BGEIX long: 1.34%;

I Bonds long: 8.95%;

TLT long: 8.78%;

2-Year/3-Year/52-Week/26-Week/13-Week/5-Year TIPS long: 7.76%;

Gold/silver/platinum coins: 5.54%;

INTC long: 2.34%;

TKC long: 2.33%;

GEO long: 1.87%;

TEI long: 1.42%;

KWEB long: 1.32%;

FXY long: 0.85%;

FXB long: 0.18%;

FXF long: 0.17%;

VZ long: 0.65%;

EPOL long: 0.34%;

T long: 0.22%;

WBD long: 0.20%;

HBI long: 0.11%;

LEMB long: 0.06%;

PCY long: 0.05%;

NGL.PR.B long: 0.02%;

CEE long: 0.02%.

The numbers add up to more than 100% because short positions only require about 30% to hold them with no margin required.

“The success of contrarian strategies requires you at times to go against gut reactions, the prevailing beliefs in the marketplace, and the experts you respect.” --David Dreman

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN (January 17, 2022): Most investors are either treating 2022 as though it will be an approximate repeat of 2021 or else they believe that the investing world is totally different than it has ever been in the past. Both of these expectations are seriously flawed. The financial markets will consistently behave similarly to whatever they have done in the past under nearly-matching conditions. Early 2022 has numerous parallels to early 2000, early 1973, and the late summer of 1929. In addition, the past year which was 2021 was surprisingly analogous to 1999-2000, 1972, and 1928-1929. Therefore, what will occur over the next few years can best be determined by examining the market's behavior during 2000-2003, 1972-1975, and 1929-1932. This is especially true since so few investors are doing likewise, thereby making it probable that you will come out far ahead by studying and applying these valuable parallels.

We have experienced an exaggerated large-cap U.S. growth bubble which will behave like all previous large-cap U.S. growth bubbles, only more so since we had achieved all-time record extremes and divergences.

Imagine that you go to see the classic movie Casablanca with a friend. You observe how your buddy responds emotionally to the scenes which you have seen over and over again and which you conclude he must be watching for the first time. After the movie is over you plan to discuss this with him, and then one of the ushers you have seen there for years says to your pal, "You must be a huge fan of this film. You've already viewed it several times during the past couple of weeks." Surprised, you turn to your friend and ask him, "Is that true? The way you reacted to the most powerful parts of the film convinced me that you had never watched it before." "Oh, sure, I've seen it over and over," he responds, "but I keep hoping that it will turn out differently."

Expecting the financial markets to turn out differently than they had done in 2000, 1972, and 1929 is a serious mistake, because we have such a close repeat of those years. Several weeks ago we had 1099 new 52-week lows for the Nasdaq in a familiar pattern where investors crowd into fewer and fewer of the biggest names near the end of a large-cap growth bubble. Boglehead investing is incredibly popular just as it had been in each of those years. Huge numbers of people who had never invested before are participating for the first time: bucket shops appearing worldwide on ordinary city and town blocks in 1928-1929; discount brokers emerging for the first time in the early 1970s; online brokerages having their debut around 1999-2000; and Robinhood/Reddit and other trendy zero-commission mobile-phone apps appealing to middle- and working-class investors in 2020-2022. There are numerous other parallels including the kinds of options trading, the times of the day/week/month/year when investors are most eagerly participating, huge net inflows into passive index funds, and all-time record overvaluations for the most popular shares. Here is one chart highlighting one of these exaggerated extremes:

The next few years will likely be similar to 1929-1932, 1972-1975, and 2000-2003.

People frequently ask me why I consistently accumulate the most-underpriced shares into extended weakness when I expect the biggest large-cap U.S. growth shares to drop over 80%. The reason is because, following growth-stock tops, value shares often end up with absolute gains especially when they are notably undervalued. Below is a chart highlighting how value shares had performed while QQQ was busy collapsing 83.6% from its March 10, 2000 intraday zenith to its October 10, 2002 intraday nadir:

The above chart highlights the useful point that a bubble for large-cap growth shares, especially the internet bubble of 1999-2000 and the Nifty Fifty bubble of 1972-1973, were followed by extended periods of outperformance by low-price-earnings assets especially in certain sectors such as gold mining. As great as the Great Depression had been, many gold mining shares gained hundreds of percent starting near the end of 1929.

There are numerous sectors today which will likely gain while large-cap growth shares keep making lower highs for two or three years.

Chinese internet shares have never been more undervalued relative to U.S. internet shares than they have in recent weeks by a large factor. Gold mining shares tend to perform especially well whenever large-cap growth shares begin powerful downtrends. Other currently-undervalued sectors include biotech, South American emerging markets, telecommunications, and recently Russian shares. Gradually purchasing these and other unpopular shares into extended weakness over the next few years is likely to be especially rewarding.

TLT and long-dated U.S. Treasuries have gone wildly out of favor in recent weeks.

Two essays were very recently posted by other analysts on Seeking Alpha which recommended selling TLT--after it has already been trading near a multi-month low. Commercials have been accumulating long positions in the 30- and especially the 10-year U.S. Treasury as you can see from maroon bars on the following charts:

10-Year U.S. Treasury

30-Year U.S. Treasury

We also had the greatest-ever two-week net outflow from TLT in its entire history. In a nearly exact inverse position from the spring of 2020, investors are minimally concerned about a recession and maximally worried about inflation. TLT will likely perform well until almost everyone is again far more concerned about a U.S. recession and continued losses for the Nasdaq 100, at which point it could become timely to sell TLT at a two-year high.

Think of your role as a jumbo-jet pilot, not an air-show sensationalist.

A jumbo-jet pilot's top responsibility is to ensure that the passengers remain calm throughout the flight, even if it means taking longer to reach the destination or even putting up with more turbulence than another approach. On a recent flight to San Francisco the pilot decided to break this rule and to make a sudden sharp dive to get us into calm air much more quickly. While he succeeded admirably in his objective and the remainder of the trip was surprisingly calm, quite a few people cried out or were otherwise upset by suddenly dropping thousands of feet. No doubt this would have been the correct maneuver as a military pilot with a squadron on board instead of ordinary passengers, but acting gradually has to take higher priority.

Even if I were to become absolutely convinced near a major bottoming pattern over the next few years that a particular drastic increase in portfolio risk is justified because VIX is at a multi-year peak, we have all-time record insider buying relative to selling, and we had the biggest weekly net outflow in decades, the next week could be even more extreme as we had experienced in March 2020. I have to discipline myself not to "pick up all those great bargains" too quickly.

Unfortunately I can't write a hundred-page essay for each posting, but you can subscribe to my twice-weekly email updates.

Several readers on Seeking Alpha usually say that I'm not giving enough detail to support my arguments. I would love to write a 100-page essay for each posting but unfortunately that's not practical. However, if you want to get additional precise details about what I am planning to buy and sell, at what prices, and in which quantities, you can subscribe to my newsletter at TrueContrarian.com. The subscription also includes two weekly Zoom meetings of 75 minutes apiece.

The bottom line: we have stealthily entered a meaningful rotation out of large-cap deflation-loving U.S. growth shares into small- and mid-cap inflation-loving global value shares. The ideal approach is to gradually purchase assets where their rate of profit growth exceed their price-earnings ratios by the widest ratios and where there is a history of outperformance by those shares under similar past circumstances. Too few investors are intelligently using 1929-1930, 1973, and 2000-2001 as a guide to 2022.

Disclosure of current holdings (most recent purchases in red):

Here is my asset allocation with average opening prices adjusted for dividends/splits and newly-opened positions in boldface: 44.1% cash including I Bonds paying 7.12% guaranteed, TIAA Traditional Annuity paying 3% to 5% (only available for legacy retirement accounts), and Discover Bank high-yield savings paying 0.40% (available for all U.S. residents with retirement and ordinary savings accounts); 18.7% short XLK (112.7737); 16.75% long TLT (148.259); 16.7% short QQQ (309.7504); 7.0% short TSLA (494.9721); 5.9% long GDXJ (39.96); 5.6% long GEO (7.65); 2.53% long GDX (28.97); 1.33% long TUR (17.17); 1.27% long KWEB (35.51); 1.22% long EWZ (27.33); 1.1% long ASA (19.43); 0.9% short AAPL (125.5481); 0.625% long ECH (22.98); 0.55% short IWF (223.0119); 0.45% short SMH (170.7813); 0.175% long T (23.17); 0.1% long UGP (2.565); 0.09% long ITUB (3.83); 0.044% long BBD (3.39); 0.013% long TIMB (9.99). It doesn't add up to 100% since short positions require less cash; there is no margin involved.

“With a good perspective on history, we can have a better understanding of the past and present, and thus a clear vision of the future.” --Carlos Slim Helu

NASTY MEAN REVERSION (November 24, 2021): There is a fascinating paradox in the financial markets. The most consistent pattern for asset behavior through the centuries is that assets which are dramatically below fair value will have a very high likelihood of rallying toward fair value and beyond to a nearly opposite extreme, while those assets which have become the most overpriced relative to fair value will have a powerful tendency to eventually plummet to fair value and beyond to a similarly-undervalued bottom. However, only a tiny minority of investors will structure their net worth to anticipate this process, since when assets are the most overvalued they appear to be the most superior and the most likely to continue climbing, while assets which are the most out of favor and the best bargains will appear to be hopeless and inferior and will emotionally induce selling rather than buying.

This is one of the primary reasons that we have experienced all-time record inflows into U.S. equity funds in 2021 which have surpassed the combined inflows from 2001 through 2020, while in years with the best opportunities there have been the heaviest net outflows. Investors keep psychologically projecting the past couple of years into the indefinite future.

People tend to be heavily influenced by the moods of their era, often subconsciously.

Andrew Tobias wrote a worthwhile book in 1980 entitled Getting By on 100,000 a Year (and Other Sad Tales). In the early 1980s hardly anyone wanted to invest in real estate, bonds, stocks, and most related assets, because the media were telling them every day why both interest rates and inflation would remain persistently high for decades or permanently. In that environment the most-popular investments were money-market funds which sometimes paid as much as 20% annualized. It was emotionally challenging to realize that if everyone else was shunning many kinds of asset classes then that made them ideal for purchase. Only a few assets in 1980 like precious metals were popular and wildly overpriced.

Today we have nearly the opposite situation in which recent participants are so confident that they are far more concerned about missing out on gains than they are about the risk of losing money. Meanwhile, precious metals which had been so overpriced in early 1980 have become undervalued along with some emerging-market stocks and bonds.

There are many ways to gauge under- and overvaluation including the ratio of total stock market capitalization to GDP for any country.

While emerging markets including Brazil, Turkey, and Chile are experiencing unusually low ratios of both household net worth and total market capitalization to gross domestic product, the U.S. has never been higher even at previous bubble peaks:

The Boglehead argument is most convincing when it should be most ignored and vice versa.

Almost no one wanted to gradually buy and hold in the early 1980s. Here's why: if you had invested in the equivalent of the S&P 500 Index in August 1929 then by August 1982--53 years later--you would have lost 38% of your money after adjusting for inflation as this chart demonstrates:

Ironically that would have made it extremely worthwhile to keep steadily buying stocks into all pullbacks in the early 1980s and at all subsequent higher bottoms. Today, when there is the greatest risk of a similar substantial loss over the next half century or so, being a Boglehead has never been more popular.

If everyone wants to "buy and hold" anything then you must do neither.

It is no coincidence that we simultaneously have very-overpriced assets at the same time as we have supply-chain problems, a shortage of workers, rising inflation, and other rare behavioral extremes.

People involved with real estate in Boise will tell you that Californians are piling in and causing permanently higher prices, while those in California will tell you that people from some other part of the world are causing housing prices to be unaffordable in their towns. Hardly anyone puts two and two together to conclude that nearly all of the peculiar distortions in the global economy are interconnected.

Imagine an inverted world in which we have a multi-decade record inventory of real estate and prices at multi-decade lows in inflation-adjusted terms. Also try to imagine dramatic losses for today's most-popular assets, multi-decade highs in unemployment in most parts of the world, and almost no one wanting to talk about cryptocurrencies because they have collapsed in value. While that might seem like an impossible scenario it is by far the most likely conclusion to the most-overpriced assets reverting to the mean and beyond to some kind of opposite extremes. This is not a far-future science-fiction scenario but something which could occur within three years and perhaps sooner.

While investors keep piling into mega-cap U.S. tech shares they have shunned Chinese internet companies, telecommunications shares, and several other sectors.

In the final weeks of 2020 and the early weeks of 2021 nearly all assets worldwide were moving higher in tandem. Since then we have been experiencing widening disparities between asset classes worldwide. The more that undervalued assets retreat in price, such as UGP, TUR, T, ITUB, and some other assets which I have been gradually accumulating recently, the more that investors are shunning these because most investors conclude that something in a lengthy downtrend will keep dropping. On the opposite overpriced end of the spectrum, analysts are focusing too much on profit growth by itself and too little on the connection between the profits of a company and its stock price.

The next few years will likely experience more frequent and more intense corrections than the average three-year period.

Periods of recent extraordinary overvaluation and extended outperformance tend to be followed by above-average pullbacks. You should therefore keep more in cash than usual in order to be able to take advantage of upcoming bargains. The more severe any overall decline tends to be, the more likely that some assets--often unknown in advance--will become especially oversold and undervalued and will thereafter rebound aggressively.

Be sure to take advantage of the U.S.-guaranteed interest rate of 7.12%.

Did you know that I Bonds, issued by the U.S. government, are currently guaranteed to pay 7.12% for six months with zero state and local income tax due on the interest (and sometimes no federal tax if the money is used for education)? Some people believe that you can only put 10 thousand dollars per calendar year into I Bonds, but that is per account, not per person. A married couple can contribute 65 thousand dollars per calendar year into I Bonds as follows: 1) 10K in your name; 2) 10K in your spouse's name; 3) 10K in the name of your revocable living trust which can be a single paragraph putting your shoelaces into it; 4) 10K into your spouse's revocable living trust; 5) 10K in your business name; 6) 10K in your spouse's business name; 7) 5K by intentionally overpaying your January 15, 2022 federal estimated tax by several thousand dollars and putting five thousand of your federal tax refund into I Bonds.

I may discuss I Bonds in more detail in my next post. Be sure to do your maximum total as soon as possible for 2021 since you have only about one month left. In early 2022 you can do your allocation for next year.

The bottom line: most investors are currently betting on some all-time record extremes becoming even more extreme. While this is always possible and may be more likely in the short run, eventually all assets regress to the mean and beyond to a roughly opposite extreme. It is therefore worth considering going against the herd. The most-overpriced assets today tend to be the most popular including large-cap U.S. tech, crypto, ESG, high-yield corporate bonds, and real estate, while many emerging-market and precious-metals shares are near multi-decade lows in either relative or absolute terms.

This mean regression could become nasty, probably involving much bigger percentage changes and greater volatility in both directions than most investors are anticipating.

Disclosure of current holdings (most recent purchases in red):

Here is my asset allocation with average opening prices adjusted for all dividends: 45.3% cash including I Bonds paying 7.12% guaranteed, TIAA Traditional Annuity paying 3% to 5% (only available for legacy retirement accounts), and Discover Bank high-yield savings paying 0.40% (available for all U.S. residents with retirement and ordinary savings accounts); 19.2% short XLK (112.7737); 17.8% short QQQ (309.7504); 17.2% long TLT (148.259); 8.25% short TSLA (494.9721); 6.3% long GEO (7.65); 4.55% long GDXJ (41.6112); 1.65% long GDX (30.1982); 0.85% short AAPL (125.5481); 0.7% long ASA (19.35); 0.7% long UGP (2.565); 0.55% short IWF (223.0119); 0.45% short SMH (170.7813); 0.2% long ECH (24.23); 0.2% long TUR (19.5525); 0.0375% long ITUB (3.94); 0.025% long BBD (3.44); 0.0125% long TIMB (9.99); 0.0125% long T (23.99). It doesn't add up to 100% since short positions require less cash; there is no margin involved.

I closed out my ZM short position on November 23, 2021 at 199.99 with an average short-sale price of 293.16.

You may wish to check out the following article on MarketWatch.com:

Record Selling by Insiders Is Setting Up Stocks for a Big Fall, Says Contrarian Investor