Only the outstanding shares available to the public can be shorted. In other words, a company cannot short stock in its treasury. Questions arose over the GameStop short squeeze in early 2021 about how over 100% of the float could be short. Such a mystery may point to "naked short selling," Brokers fail to locate borrowed shares but sell short anyway. Since this topic gets little media coverage outside of financial publications, there's no public outcry calling for investigations of stock manipulation. Under normal conditions, the maximum amount of shares in a stock that can be sold short is equivalent to the float. So when short interest jumps above 100%, it's an indicator that something shady is going on. Very rarely does such an event occur. But GME still had over 100% short interest in November 2021 as the stock rallied from $210 to $247 but closed out the year at $148. The stock fell below $100 in 2022 but began spiking again on the news; its Chairman Ryan Cohen purchased 100,000 shares.