Short sellers target Toronto-Dominion Bank with $3.7B in bearish bets

Short sellers are betting that Canada-based lender Toronto-Dominion Bank — better known as TD — will be the next bank stock to plunge due to ongoing turmoil in the global banking sector.

Investors have wagered approximately $3.7 billion on bearing bets against shares of Toronto-Dominion, which ranks as Canada’s second largest bank, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing data from analytics firm S3 Partners.

Toronto-Dominion is now the most-shorted financial intuition in the world, according to the firm’s data.

France’s BNP Paribas ranks second with just over $3 billion in short bets, following by Bank of America at roughly $2.74 billion and JPMorgan Chase at $2.6 billion.

“Short sellers have been actively shorting into a declining banking sector,” S3 Partners managing director of predictive analytics Ihor Dusaniwsky told the outlet.

Bank stocks around the world came under pressure in recent weeks after the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York sparked fears of spreading contagion.

Those fears escalated as turmoil engulfed Credit Suisse, which was rescued by rival UBS Group, as well as US regional banks such as First Republic, which received a $30 billion lifeline from the nation’s largest lenders.

Analysts told Bloomberg that concerns about Toronto-Dominion bank are likely related to its minority stake in Charles Schwab, which experienced a stock plunge last month at the height of the banking crisis, as well as TD’s links to the struggling Canadian housing market.

Additionally, some TD Group shareholders are urging the lender to nix its planned $13.4 billion of Tennessee-based First Horizon Bank due to the uncertain outlook for regional institutions, Reuters reported.

According to S3’s Dusaniwsky, short sellers secured a boon in March as Canada-listed shares of TD plunged by 11% — though he noted the trend could be short-lived given recent volatility in stock prices.

In the US, Toronto-Dominion does business under the name “TD Bank.”

US-listed shares are down about 9% so far this year.

TD representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.