The short sellers keep running for cover as the bull market continues. In the actively traded high-priced market leaders, the trend continues for less and less short selling and many of these are now at the lowest readings of the year and are a fraction of the 2010 peak levels. The settlement date is December 31, 2010 and we compared each to December 15 and prior dates.

Our list includes Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: A
MZN), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), F5 Networks, 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 31 settlement date versus the December 15 settlement date, plus we have shown other short interest data.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) saw a slight uptick in the short interest at December 31 settlement date with a reading of 8.926 million shares after having seen a 9.2% decrease on December 15 after having seen a near-15% decrease in the report on November 30.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) saw yet another drop as the December 31 settlement was down to 6.777 million shares after having seen drops before.  This was more than 9 million shares as recently as mid-November.  Apple’s short interest was the lowest it had been all year and is now only one-third of what it had been in February 2010.

Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) saw a slight drop again to 7.82 million shares at the December 31 settlement date; this makes four consecutive reports of a decrease in the short interest and is only one-third of the short interest since March 15, 2010.