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Short Interest In Microsoft (MSFT) Spikes

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The most visible shift in short interest in the new Nasdaq figures as of October 31, is the sharp increase in shares sold short in Microsoft.

From October 15 to the end of the month, the short interest in the world’s largest software company rose 23.9 million to 101.3 million, the largest increase of any company listed on the Nas.

After making a multi-year high late last month, the stock has sold off some, but not nearly to the extent that other Big Techs like Cisco (CSCO), Intel (INTC), and Google (GOOG) have.

Some on Wall St. may simple think that all the good news is baked into the stock now. It’s Vista launch has gone better than most thought it would, and PC sales in general continue to move up more than expected. The new version of Office has done well. And, after billions of dollars of loses, Redmond made money on its Xbox 360 unit for the first time last quarter, driven by the launch of its new "Halo 3" video game.

The only part of MSFT doing poorly is it online operation, lead by MSN. Based on results from Yahoo! (YHOO) and AOL, that is not going to change.

The company is probably operating as "perfectly" as it can now. Investors sense that, and don’t see what news could possibly take the stock up much from where it trades today.

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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