... in a world in which nothing has changed from a year ago, and where fundamentals still don't matter, what is one to do to generate an outside market return? Simple: more of the same and punish those who still believe in an efficient, capital-allocating marketplace and keep bidding up the most shorted names.

Following this initial observation, we would periodically urge readers to keep doing this simple trade year after year, which repeatedly proved to be the best source of alpha in a market that has become infatuated with beta, as none other than Bank of America confirmed in late 2019 when it showed that going long the most shorted names and shorting the most popular ones has continued to be not only the most consistently profitable, alpha-generating strategy, but that in 2019, the top 10 crowded stocks underperformed the 10 most neglected stocks by 23%, the most on record!