The most recent short interest data has been released by the NASDAQ for the 04/30/2013 settlement date, which shows a 268,574 share increase in total short interest for Wausau Paper Corp ( WPP), to 1,960,234, an increase of 15.88% since 04/15/2013. Total short interest is just one way to look at short data; another metric that we here at Dividend Channel find particularly useful is the "days to cover" metric because it considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares traded. The number of shares short is then compared to the average daily volume, in order to calculate the total number of trading days (at the average volume) it would take to close out all of the open short positions if every share traded represented a short position being closed. Average daily volume for WPP at the 04/30/2013 settlement decreased to 147,788, as compared to 192,899 at the 04/15/2013 report. That brought "days to cover" up to 13.26, a 51.25% increase from the 8.77 days to cover calculated at the previous short interest data release. The below chart shows the historical "days to cover" for WPP at previous short interest release dates:

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In afternoon trading Friday, WPP was down about 0.6% on the day.