Some Chipmakers Paid Off on Short Interest Bets

April 25, 2013 by Paul Ausick

Chip photo
Source: Thinkstock
We have tracked the key short interest changes as of April 15 in the following semiconductor leaders: Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD), Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU), SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK), Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), ARM Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: ARMH), Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM), Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL), Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA), Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: TXN) and Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT). We also chose to look at how the Market Vectors Semiconductor ETF (NYSEMKT: SMH) has held up.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) short interest fell 1.4% to 235.47 million shares. About 4.8% of Intel’s float is now short.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) saw short interest rise by 10.6% to 102.23 million shares, or 16.9% of the company’s total float.

Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) short interest rose by 1.2% to 13.82 million shares, which represents 0.8% of the company’s float.

ARM Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: ARMH) saw an 8% decline in short interest to 3.27 million shares, which represents about 0.7% of the firm’s float.

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) showed a rise of 9.9% in short interest, to 85.42 million shares, or about 8.4% of Micron’s float.

SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) saw short interest rise by 15.5% to 9.36 million shares, or 3.9% of the company’s float.

Short interest in Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM) rose by 6.2% to 7.35 million shares. That is 1.4% of the total float.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) posted a 7.7% drop in short interest, to 5.26 million shares, or about 1.2% of Marvell’s float.

Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) short interest rose by 1.8% to 26.52 million shares, about 4.5% of the company’s float.

Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: TXN) saw short interest increase by 23.2% to 28.17 million shares, or 2.6% of the float.

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) short interest rose by 25.9% to 18.95 million shares, which is about 1.6% of the company’s float.

The Market Vectors Semiconductor ETF (NYSEMKT: SMH) showed a rise of 6.9% in short interest to 9.71 million shares.

Shorts piled back into Texas Instruments during this period, likely not expecting the stock to post a new high following its earnings report earlier this week.

A better short bet was Applied Materials. The maker of equipment used in chipmaking took a dive last week before recovering most of the loss this week. SanDisk’s swing was even larger in the past two weeks. Short interest in both these stocks should drop in the current two-week period.

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