Twice a month, the Toronto Stock Exchange publishes their short report, which outlines the stocks investors have most aggressively bet against. Large companies almost always dominate this list. A short-seller of any size needs to short a large, liquid stock. If a big investor needs to short $10 million worth of something to get an adequate position size, it's a lot easier to short 1% of a $1 billion company than it is to short 10% of a $100 million company. Thus, it seems obvious that Canada's largest companies would be the ones shorted the most. And, for the most part, this is true. But there's a bit of an exception to the rule. Canada's banks are far more shorted than companies of a similar size. Here's a summary of the short positions held against Canada's banks as of December 31, 2016. If you add up the dollar amounts, the results are staggering. There's $5.6 billion shorting Toronto-Dominion Bank ( TSX:TD )( NYSE:TD ) alone with another $3.4 billion shorting Royal Bank.