Apple Short Interest Plunges by 34 Million Shares

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:41PM EST · Published Dec 28, 9:15AM EST

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Apple Short Interest Plunges by 34 Million Shares — © courtesy of Apple Inc.

Despite questions about iPhone sales and a falling stock price, shares sold short in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) fell 34.1 million shares to 74.3 million for the period that ended December 15.

Apple’s share price has dropped over 8% in the past month.

As an example of recent sentiment, Barron’s reported that Drexel Hamilton’s Brian White wrote:

With 97% of the sales reported for the companies in our Apple Monitor, we estimate preliminary revenue during November fell by 6% MoM and weaker than the average increase of 8% over the past nine years. This compares to the 4% MoM increase in November sales during 2014.

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Among the theories about sales of the iPhone 6 family are that consumers will wait for the iPhone 7 to be released next year, or that the iPhone 6 family is not an enough of an upgrade from earlier products to turn consumers’ heads. Sales of the iPhone 6 family, which have been strong, negate that theory.

Alternatively, sales in China, which has become Apple’s most important market, might have slowed. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has indicated that without China, Apple’s growth prospects are grim.

However, there must be a large number of optimists about Apple’s near-term future, as short sellers have moved away from its stock.

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.