Following a strong market surge, investors who bet against U.S. and Canadian equities had paper losses of $194.9 billion last year, according to data source S3 Partners Research, which released its findings on Thursday.

2023 was deemed by the company to be a “very challenging year” for short sellers due to the S&P 500’s 24.2% increase and the Nasdaq Composite Index’s 43.4% rise. A stock’s short sellers are wagering on a stock’s decline in value.

The six largest losers for short sellers were bets against Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Amazon.com, according to S3.

According to S3, investors had a $957 billion net short position overall.

Even so, some investors managed to profit from their bets against stocks, particularly amid the market-shaking banking crisis in March of last year.

The most lucrative short last year was First Republic Bank shares, which JPMorgan Chase finally purchased. The profit on the short position was $1.6 billion, or 840%. Additionally, the third- and eleventh-most profitable wagers in 2023 were failed lenders SVB Financial Group and Signature Bank, respectively.

There were reports earlier in April that in financially challenged banks, early short sellers were a tiny minority.

(Adapted from Reuters.com)