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Banking, finance, and taxes

Mixed Short Interest In Brokerage Stocks (GS, BSC, LEH, MS)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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There was no clear direction in the change in NYSE short interest on the major bulge bracket brokerage firms.  If you look at the earnings this week, Goldman Sachs seems to have been the key winner.  Its stock gave back all of its early gains after the earnings were out, but Jim Cramer came out Thursday night on CNBC’s Mad Money to call Goldman the key winner and said it’s going significantly higher by this time next year.

Here is a list of the bulge bracket brokerage firm and investment banker stocks showing the change in the short interest from August to September 2007:

Brokerage Stock            SEPT          AUG       %Change
Goldman Sachs (GS)  10.359M    9.907M        4.56%
Morgan Stanley (MS)    14.226M    16.059M    -11.40%
Merrill Lynch (MER)      23.230M    23.279M     -0.20%
Lehman Bros. (LEH)    25.259M    24.190M     4.40%
Bear Stearns (BSC)     14.636M    12.082M     21.00%

There was a lot of mixed feelings heading into earnings for the brokerage firm stocks this week.  The mixed results in short selling makes sense if you consider the overall environment.

Jon C. Ogg
September 21, 2007

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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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