You could’ve made four times the S&P 500 this year if you fully embraced an Amazon-driven retail apocalypse.
All you had to do was make bullish bets on Amazon, while placing bearish wagers on the most-shorted retailers, in proportion to their short interest, according to data compiled by financial analytics provider S3 Partners. Putting $100 million to work on either end of the trade would’ve netted a 43.7% return in 2017, the firm’s data show.
That’s more than quadruple the benchmark S&P 500’s roughly 10% gain this year through last week’s close, and well over double the return for the Nasdaq Composite index, which has climbed 18%.
