24/7 Wall St. » Short Interest

Short Sellers Backed Off CMGI Into Earnings (CMGI)

247wallst — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:43:31 +0000

CMGI Inc. (NASDAQ:CMGI) saw its short interest come in at 34.781 million shares in September 2007, down some 12% from the 39.926 million shares listed as being in the August short interest. Shares traded down about 5% last night in after-hours trading after its earnings, although the shares had initially taken a 10% haircut. Here was the full summary of its results.

We had noted ahead of time how the results were going to be more of a focus rather than the side show items. Here are other items of interest pertinent to last night’s earnings report and the short interest:

Jon C. Ogg
September 26, 2007

JOn Ogg produces the 24/7 Wall St., LLC Special Situation Investing Newsletter; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Mixed Short Interest In Brokerage Stocks (GS, BSC, LEH, MS)

247wallst — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:58:28 +0000

There was no clear direction in the change in NYSE short interest on the major bulge bracket brokerage firms. If you look at the earnings this week, Goldman Sachs seems to have been the key winner. Its stock gave back all of its early gains after the earnings were out, but Jim Cramer came out Thursday night on CNBC’s Mad Money to call Goldman the key winner and said it’s going significantly higher by this time next year.

Here is a list of the bulge bracket brokerage firm and investment banker stocks showing the change in the short interest from August to September 2007:

Brokerage Stock          SEPT       AUG    %Change
Goldman Sachs (GS) 10.359M 9.907M       4.56%
Morgan Stanley (MS) 14.226M 16.059M -11.40%
Merrill Lynch (MER)    23.230M 23.279M    -0.20%
Lehman Bros. (LEH) 25.259M 24.190M    4.40%
Bear Stearns (BSC)    14.636M 12.082M    21.00%

There was a lot of mixed feelings heading into earnings for the brokerage firm stocks this week. The mixed results in short selling makes sense if you consider the overall environment.

If you’d like to see the major drop in short selling in banking stocks, here is that report.
You can also see the drop in the total short interest at the NYSE and AMEX in September.
We also have a full list showing major stocks short, with housing and retail still getting bets against them.
We even noted this week about how Goldman showed Bear who daddy is after we had looked over the trading in stocks after other earnings but before theirs.

Jon C. Ogg
September 21, 2007

Major Banks: Big Drop In September Short Interest (BAC, C, JPM, WB, WFC)

247wallst — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:28:38 +0000

It looks like short sellers decided to bail out of the money center banking stocks ahead of the FOMC decision on rates. This is consistent with the overall trends if you look at the total exchange short interest we discussed last night on the short interest dropping on NYSE and on AMEX for the first time in months.

Here we have a small table showing the short interest dropping in all of the money center and giant U.S. banking stocks:

Bank Stock (ticker)             SEPT.       AUG.    %Change
Bank of America (BAC) 31.748M 41.285M -23.00%
Citigroup (C)                   34.406M 40.521M -15.10%
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) 37.516M 45.234M -17.05%
Wachovia (WB)                36.059M 49.889M -27.70%
Wells Fargo (WFC)          47.395M 62.988M -24.75%

If you average this out, it appears that the overall short interest on a raw average of percentages was a drop of 21.52% from August to September 2007.

Jon C. Ogg
September 21, 2007

September Short Interest Decreases At NYSE & AMEX (NYX, NDAQ)

247wallst — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:20:47 +0000

The short interest data for the NYSE Euronext (NYSE:NYX) and the American Stock Exchange are both out and they are both showing something we haven’t seen for some time: short interest declined, if you can believe it. For months this was a growing number as the market was rising.

The NYSE Group showed short interest on the September 14 settlement date listed as 11,841,051,529 shares, down from 12,466,511,521 as of August 15, 2007. This is the first drop from when January 2007 short interest of 9.68 Billion shares fell to 9.595 Billion shares in February 2007.

Over at the AMEX, there was also a drop in the total short interest. August 15, 2007 showed 1,194,902,117 shares in the total short interest, yet today’s numbers shows 1,032,872,816 shares as of the September 14, 2007 settlement date. The last drop seen on AMEX short interest was listed when the 877,477,463 shares short in March 2007 fell to 865,833,907 in April 2007.

It appears that maybe short sellers figured it out this time and decided that being short stocks going into a rate cutting cycle wasn’t a good play. The short interest report for NASDAQ (NASDAQ:NDAQ) will not be out until next week, so stay tuned. Throughout the night or tomorrow we’ll have some individual short interest data.

Jon C. Ogg
September 20, 2007