Largest Short Interest Positions

The short interest in the stocks with the largest positions as of August 15:

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) down 2% to 220 million shares. Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) up 8% to 218 million. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) down 7% to 186 million. Sprint-Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) down 17% to 129 million. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) up 6% to 99 million.

Short interest in Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) fell 12% to 99 million shares. Shares short in Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK) rose 4% to 92 million. The short interest in SuperValu Inc. (NYSE: SVU) declined 7% to 87 million. Shares short in General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) fell 3% to 84 million. The short interest in Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA) fell 16% to 80 million. Shares short in Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) were up 23% to 68 million.

Among Nasdaq stocks, the short interest in Sirius XM Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) fell 21% to 260 million shares. Shares short in Frontier Communications Corp. (NASDAQ: FTR) fell 2% to 228 million. The short interest in Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) was up 4% to 152 million. Shares short in Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) rose 44% to 88 million. Short interest in Research In Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) was down 3% to 87 million. Shares short in Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) were flat at 83 million. The short interest in Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR) rose 24% to 74 million

Data from NYSE and Nasdaq.

Douglas A. McIntyre