The short sellers ran for cover yet again when it comes to the actively traded high-priced market leaders.  There was hardly an exception.  December 15 settlement date for the short interest was significantly lower in these names from the November 30 settlement date.  Our list includes Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B), F5 N
etworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (NYSE: POT), priceline.com Incorporated (NASDAQ: PCLN), Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM), Vmware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), and Wynn Resorts Ltd. (NASDAQ: WYNN).

We have broken these names out individually in an alphabetic list, showing the decrease (or the small gains) and a short interest share count as of December 15 settlement date versus the November 30 settlement date.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) saw a 9.2% decrease after having seen a near-15% decrease in the report two weeks ago.  The short interest fell to 8.591 million shares from 9.464 million at the end of November.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) saw another drop of 6.9% after a prior drop of 3.2% at the last report.  The mid-December short interest was 8.165 million shares versus 8.767 million shares at the end of November and versus more than 9 million shares a month ago.

Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) saw a drop of 2.2% to 7.986 million shares and that was after a prior drop of about 4.5% at the last report.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) saw a large drop at -12.8% to 16.182 million shares and that was after a drop of 8.2% two weeks ago.  This is considerable if you consider the short interest was north of 20 million shares short in mid-November.