Investing

Short Sellers Mob Big Banks And Telecoms (BAC)(C)(VZ)(T)

Short sellers took huge positions in major banks and telecom companies in the two-week period ending December 15. The short interest in Citigroup (NYSE:C) rose 30% to 281 million ahead of the bank closing its fourth quarter books. Investors also expect…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published December 29, 2009, 4:22am ET · 2 min read

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Short sellers took huge positions in major banks and telecom companies in the two-week period ending December 15. The short interest in Citigroup (NYSE:C) rose 30% to 281 million ahead of the bank closing its fourth quarter books. Investors also expect an earnings stumble at Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), perhaps because of its credit card default rates. Shares short in the financial firm rose 218% to 240 million. Shares sold short in Bank of New York (NYSE:BK) rose 23% to 16 million.

Among the largest telecom companies concerns about slowing wireless sales and attrition in wireless sales drove up shares sold short in AT&T (NYSE:T) to 51 million, a 10% increase. The phone firm reacted to network problems affecting the performance of the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone. Shares sold short in rival Verizon (NYSE:VZ) were up 20% to 51 million. The short interest in Qwest (NYSE:Q) moved higher by 13% to 54 million.

Tech shares posted better short interest results perhaps on the assumption that the IT spending recovery will continue. Shares short in Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) fell 4% to 61 million. The short interest in Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) rose very slightly to 60 million shares. Shares short in Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) ticked up 3% to 55 million The short interest in Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) fell by 7% to 48 million.

Shares sold short in Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) fell 9% to 39 million. The short interest in Nvidia (NSADAQ:NVDA) was down 29% to 25 million. Shares short in Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) dropped 17% to 24 million and shares short in Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) rose 2% to 23 million. The short interest in Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) rose 3% to 22 million.

Data from NYSE and NASDAQ.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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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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