US Softlines Retail Crowded Stocks: What the Quant Data Says, Volume 45

Research evidence excerpt

US Softlines Retail Crowded Stocks: What the Quant Data Says, Volume 45

Global Research

2 July 2026ab

US Softlines Retail Equities

AmericasCrowded Stocks: What the Quant Data Says,

Volume 45 Retailers, Specialty

Jay Sole

Analyst

jay.sole@ubs.com

Most crowded longs: TJX, ROST, BURL; most crowded shorts: BIRK, KTB, DDS: +1-212-713 3559

We define a “crowded long” this way: A high percentage of eligible funds own a stock. Nicolo Menez

The most crowded longs in our Softlines coverage universe right now are: TJX, ROST, Analyst

BURL, VFC, and REAL. We define a ''crowded short'' this way: A high percentage of nicolo.menez@ubs.com

eligible funds are short a stock. The most crowded shorts in our Softlines coverage +1-212-713 3183

universe right now are: BIRK, KTB, DDS, DBI, and WWW. See Figures 3-4 inside for more Mauricio Serna, CFA

detail. Also see the UBS Quant team's crowding and crowding momentum analyses for Analyst

further information. mauricio.serna@ubs.com

+1-212-713 9028

Biggest crowding score changes: Positive: VFC, BURL; Negative: WWW, RL: Natalie Koltermann

We ranked our Softlines coverage universe according to crowding score over the last 3 Associate Analyst

months. A positive change implies a stock has become incrementally crowded on the natalie.koltermann@ubs.com

long side, and vice versa. The five stocks that have experienced the biggest positive +1-212-713 4229

change in their crowding scores over the last 3 months are: VFC, BURL, TPR, KSS, and Aditya Kulkarni

SHOO. On the other side of the spectrum, WWW, RL, AS, BIRK, and BKE are five stocks Associate Analyst

that have experienced the biggest negative change in their crowding scores over the last aditya.kulkarni@ubs.com

3 months (Figure 5). +1-212-713 1098

Serge Severenchuk