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Investing

Short Sellers Flee Telecom And Financial Stocks (VZ, T, MOT, S, MSFT)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Bank stocks will rebound and telecom shares will rise. That is, at least, the prevailing opinion among short sellers as of October 15.

Telecom and telecom equipment shares will benefit from an exit of short sellers as much as those in any other sector. Shares sold short in AT&T (NYSE: T) fell 20% to 45.9 million. The short interest in Verizon (NYSE: VZ) dropped 15% to 46.3 million. Both companies had erosion in the land line businesses last quarter, but their cellular businesses grew. That may be reflected in a 15% drop in the short interest in Motorola (NYSE: MOT)–down 41 million shares

Shares sold short in telecom weakling Sprint-Nextel (NYSE: S) were down 8% to 80.9 million. The short interest in telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) dropped 19% to 18.9 million.

Short sellers stampeded away from financial shares. The short interest in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) dropped 16% to 128.2 million despite the firm’s problems with mortgage paperwork. Shares short in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) dropped 17% to 43.9 million. The short interest in Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) fell 21% to 12.5 million.

Troubled companies such as  Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) were favorites of short sellers who increased their positions in both companies.

Among tech shares, short sellers adopted a neutral position. Shares short in Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) were flat at 77.2 million. Shares short in Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) rose 8% to 32.2 million. The short interest in Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) was up less than 3% to 49.6 million. The short interest in Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) was down 9% to 57.8 million.

Data from NYSE and NASDAQ

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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