Here are the top 10 ETFs short sellers bet billions against in December

Reuters

• Short-sellers poured billions into bets against exchange-traded funds in December, according to recent data from financial-analytics provider S3 Partners.
• Traders put over $3 billion into the most-shorted ETFs, which were all bond-focused, as investors "are looking for interest rate movement leading into year-end," said Ihor Dusaniwsky, the managing partner of predictive analytics.
• Here are the top 10 ETFs where traders increased their short positions in December.
• Read more on Business Insider.

Traders betting against exchange-traded funds poured billions into the positions in December, particularly bond-focused funds, according to a Monday note from S3 Partners, a financial analytics provider.

Three funds tracking bond benchmarks saw the biggest changes in shares shorted in December, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, the managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners.

Investors put their money into shorting bond ETFs because they "are looking for interest rate movement leading into year-end," he wrote.

Traders betting against bond ETFs put more than $3 billion into shorting shares of the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corp Bond ETF (HYG), iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corp Bond ETF (LQD), and the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG) in December.

Equity ETFs - such as the SPDR Financial Select Sector fund - were also present on the list. It's important to note that shorting activity on ETFs that track major indexes is often indicative of hedging activity, rather than outright directional wagers.

Here are the top 10 ETFs where short-sellers increased short positions in December, ranked from lowest change in shares shorted to highest.