Short sales totaled 181 million shares, down from 196.9 million a month earlier.
Volume totaled 416.3 million shares, the largest since the week of the 1987 crash.
This surpassed the previous record set a month earlier, when short interest totaled 2.13 billion shares.
Big Board volume totaled 327.6 million shares, slightly below normal.
Big Board volume totaled nearly 335 million shares, close to the year's daily average of 332 million.
The period a year earlier totaled 349.8 million shares.
Volume totaled 196.2 million shares, up from 172.6 million the day before.
It could not be determined if any of yesterday's selling, totaling 64,100 shares, came from that group.
The short positions in 5,328 stocks on the Nasdaq market totaled 1.02 billion shares.
For the period ended Sept. 15, 1986, short sales totaled 387.1 million shares.
