7. GE (NYSE: GE)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 56.6 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $199.1 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 55.5 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $156.8 Billion
GE is the world’s largest conglomerate and one of the largest corporations of any kind in the world. It holds substantial global market share in the financial services, energy infrastructure, consumer electronics, medical equipment, j
et engine, energy infrastructure, and household appliance businesses. Investors view GE as a proxy for the broader economy. This is true and has made it hard for GE to grow faster than GDP for the last several years.
8. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 57.9 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $243.8 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 85.2 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $62.4 Billion
The world’s largest software, the stock is often owned by investors because of its dominance in the PC, server, and business applications industries. Nearly 90% of all PCs worldwide use the Windows operating system. Microsoft also has systems to run smart phones and mobile media players. Apple and Google have challenged it in these smaller device businesses. Microsoft is also a way for investors to follow the search engine and video game businesses. Microsoft is the No.2 search engine company in the US due to a business combination with Yahoo! and a large video game manufacturer. Its lead product is the Xbox 360.
Also Read: Apple Earnings Shine With or Without Jobs
9. Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 22.2 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $117.7 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 41.2 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $40 Billion
Cisco makes the infrastructure that runs the Internet. Its huge routers are the critical traffic managers of the Web. They operate at the core of the infrastructure of almost all large cable and telecom firms. Cisco has become more of a consumer driven business in the last five years. It owns one of the largest TV set-top box operations. It purchased the Linksys WiFi business. Cisco’s primary goal is to use its products to transmit video to run the consumer and business video industries from the point at which they leave the provider to hundreds of millions of PCs or TVs.
10 . Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 54.5 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $6.2 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 213.1 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $2.5 Billion
Sirius XM Satellite Radio is what is left of the two companies that created the satellite radio business. The hope of the industry was that it would replace a large portion of the free radio listening audience with people who would pay to have seamless service and scores of channels available anywhere in the US. The company’s products were widely used and Sirius XM became a cult stock, traded heavily because of the extremely low price of its shares and excitement which surrounded the launch and growth of an entirely new category of media and consumer electronics. The presence of Howard Stern helped. The firm has the most shorted stock of any company traded on the NASDAQ.
Douglas A. McIntyre
