Why did Silvergate Capital tumble today? Stock sees increased short selling

Silvergate Capital ( NYSE: SI ) stock tumbled as much as 12.2% on Tuesday, ending ~10% lower, owing to increased short selling activity in recent days. Over the last 30 days, ~4.9M Silvergate ( SI ) shares worth $89M were shorted. "Shorts have been increasing their exposure even though the trade has been unprofitable in 2023," said S3 Partners' Ihor Dusaniwsky. "SI shorts are down ~$28.4M million in YTD mark-to-market losses, down 9.1% on an average short interest of $311M." Dusaniwsky noted that most of these losses occurred recently, with February month-to-date mark-to-market losses of $75.8M. "The ability to short more SI will be severely constrained due to lack of stock borrow availability to support settlements of new shorted shares. This is going to be a very expensive short to keep open as stock borrow financing costs eat into profits," Dusaniwsky cautioned. He said most of the active long shareholders are hedge funds, and the large amount of long and short hedge fund shareholders will create volatility in the stock. Earlier, Binance reportedly transferred over $400M from Binance.US' account at Silvergate ( SI ) to Merit Peak .