Short Sellers Jump on Mobile Chip Maker Stocks

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) short interest fell 0.9% to 246.42 million shares. About 5% of Intel’s float is now short.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) saw short interest rise by 1.6% to 113.97 million shares, or 18.7% of the company’s total float.

Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) short interest rose 15.3% to 24.01 million shares, which represents 1.4% of the company’s float.

ARM Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: ARMH) saw a 6.3% rise in short interest to 8.75 million shares, which represents about 1.9% of the firm’s float.

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) showed a rise of 4.5% in short interest to 111.99 million shares, or about 10.9% of Micron’s float.

SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) saw short interest fall by 5.8% to 22.5 million shares, or 9.4% of the company’s float.

Short interest in Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM) jumped 22.4% to 12.56 million shares. That is 2.4% of the total float.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) posted a 19.1% increase in short interest, to 11.77 million shares, or about 3% of Marvell’s float.

Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) short interest fell by 1.1% to 40.29 million shares, about 7.3% of the company’s float.

Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: TXN) saw short interest fall by 2.3% to 23.92 million shares, or 2.2% of the float.

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) short interest fell 2% to 15.74 million shares, which is about 1.3% of the company’s float.

The Market Vectors Semiconductor ETF (NYSEMKT: SMH) showed a drop of 5.5% in short interest to 9.87 million shares.

Weak forecasts for demand from mobile device makers has sent short interest in Broadcom, Marvell and Qualcomm sharply higher. AMD’s total short interest is approaching 20% of shares and could continue rising as the share price rises. Tuesday’s announcement from Applied Materials that it was merging with Tokyo Electron led to a rise in the share price and could bring out more short interest in the next few weeks.