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Banking, finance, and taxes

Short Sellers Move Into Banks, Out Of Tech (C)(BAC)(WFC)(DELL)(INTC)(CSCO)(MSFT)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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bearShort sellers may have helped themselves by moving out of tech stocks just as shares in the sector began to make big advances.

In the period ending. May 11, short interest in Microsoft (MSFT) fell 10% to 79.7 million shares. Shares sold short in Cisco (CSCO) fell 9% to 68.6 million. The short interest in Juniper (JNPR) was off by 5% to 52.4 million. Shares short in Oracle (ORCL) were down 2% to 50.3 million.

The only significant deviation in the retreat of short in selling in the tech sector was PC and chip stock in companies where revenue has been weakened by global demand. Share short in Dell (DELL) rose 14% to 41.2 million and the short interest in Intel (INTC) moved up 6% to 85.6 million.

The recovery in bank stocks will not last if short positions are any indication, but the results of stress tests may squeeze shorts out of these stocks.  Shares sold short in Citigroup (C) rose 3% to 1,270 million. The short interest in Bank of America (BAC) was up 11% to 174.4 million. Shares short in Wells Fargo (WFC) moved up 8% to 161.7 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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