Short Sellers Make Huge Bets US Financials Will Tumble As Citigroup (C) Sees More Write-Downs (LEH)(AIG)(WB)(WM)(ABK)(JPM)(GM)(F)(GE)(WMT)(MOT)(DAL)(EMC)(Q)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Citigroup’s (C) CFO says he see write-downs through the end of the year. The head of hedge fund Paulson & Co,says bank losses will hit $1.3 trillion. Write-downs at Lehman (LEH) and AIG (AIG) were much larger than were expected.

It may well be a long, hard second half for the bank, insurance, and brokerage sectors.

It is any wonder that short sellers have upped their bets against big financial companies. As of June 15, the short interest in Wachovia (WB) rose 26.2 million shares to 177.3 million. Share short in Washington Mutual (WM) were up 50 million to 254.8 million. The short interest in Citigroup (C) was up 20 million to 135.7 million. Shares short in Ambac (ABK) rose 12.3 million to 74.5 million. The short interest in JPMorgan (JPM) was up 11.9 million shares to 63 million and shares short in AIG (AIG) moved up 12.6 million to 67.4 million.

Car stocks were also hit hard by shorts. Shares short in GM (GM) rose 14.9 million to 120.2 million. Shares short in Ford (F) rose 31.3 million to 317.6 million.

Short sellers also made large increases in their positions in GE (GE), Wal-Mart (WMT), Motorola (MOT), and Delta (DAL)

Shorts moved out of EMC (EMC) and Qwest (Q).

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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