Shorting the Brokerage Stocks (MS, GS, BSC, AGE, JEF, RJF, MER, LEH, IAI)

Stock Tickers: MS, GS, BSC, AGE, JEF, RJF, MER, LEH, IAI

The short interest for MAY 2007 looks a bit mixed in the brokerage firm stocks from April to May, although on a net basis you can see that there was all in all a fairly large rise the short interest of the brokerage firm stocks.  The iShares US BrokerDealers (IAI) saw a short interest rise of 18% from 1.539 million in April to 1.821 million shares in May.  Merrill Lynch and Lehman Bros were the only two major brokerage firms that saw a drop in their short interest from April to May.  Here is the rest of the May short interest versus April:

STOCK (Ticker)                MAY07    APR07    Change
Morgan Stanley (MS)       10.21M    8.86M    29.9%
Goldman Sachs (GS)      8.53M    7.09M     20.7%
Bear Stearns (BSC)         6.28M    5.97M     5.2%
A.G.Edwards (AGE)         2.93M    2.84M      1.9%
Jefferies (JEF)                  6.78M    6.44M      5.2%
Raymond James (RJF)  2.95M    2.55M    15.6%

lower short interest…..

Merrill Lynch (MER)         14.41M    14.97M    -3.75%
Lehman (LEH)                 10.67M    11.08M    -3.73%

Jon C. Ogg
May 22, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.