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Investing

Short Sellers Increase Bets Across the Board

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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For the first time in a long time, short sellers have increased their bets that the stock prices of most large companies and in most large sectors will fall. The NYSE and Nasdaq released their figures for short positions as of January 13.

Short sellers increased their positions in all four of America’s large banks. The short interest in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) rose 18.5% to 186.1 million. The price of its stock, and most other bank stocks, have risen as it appears that the worst of their balance sheet problems have faded some. Shares sold short in Citigroup (NYSE: C) rose 19.1% to 50.3 million. The short interest in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) was up by 11.4% to 47.1 million. Shares sold short in JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) were up by 21.5% to 40.6 million.

Shares sold short in the two big car companies also rose. The short interest in Ford (NYSE: F) was up by 14.7% to 147.1 million. Shares sold short in General Motors (NYSE: GM) were up 13.7% to 62.3 million.

The short interest in almost all major tech stocks was up as well. Shares short in Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), which posted relatively good earnings, were up 49.8% to 101.5 million. Shares sold short in Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), which also posted strong numbers for the fourth quarter, rose 12.2% to 131.8 million. The short interest in Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) was up by 6.1% to 69.9 million. Shares sold short in Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) were up by 40.8% to 27.4 million.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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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