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Investing

Shorts Sellers Look For Sharp Sell-Off In Financials (WM)(WFC)(WB)(FNM)(AIG)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Short sellers sharply increased their bets against big US banks based on data from the NYSE as of May 30. The number compare with those onMay 15.

Short interest in Washington Mutual (WM) was up 12.2 million shares to 204.9 million. Shares short in Wells Fargo (WFC) rose 29.3 million to 153.1 million. Short interest in Wachovia (WB) rocketed 30.5 million shares to 151 million., The short position against Fannie Mae (FNM) moved up 24.8 million to 129 million. Shares short in Lehman (LEH) moved up 2.1 million to 76.1 million. Short interest in AIG (AIG) jumped 11.4 million to 54.8 million.

Short sellers also made increasing bets against car companies. Shares short in GM (GM) moved up 4.7 million to 105.2 million. Ford’s (F) short interest, the largest of any company on the NYSE, jumped 6.1 million to 286.4 million.

Short sellers also gambled that GE (GE) shares would fall, increasing their position by 11 million shares to 68.7 million. Shares short in airline AMR (AMR) moved up 10.7 million to 52.5 million.

Short sellers moved out of Sprint (S), selling down 4.9 million shares to leave 78.8 million. Shorts also exited Motorola (MOT), dropping their interest by 3.4 million shares to 45.4 million.

Data from NYSE

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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