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Microsoft: Shorts Keep A Strong Bet

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Shares short in Microsoft (MSFT) rose 4.3 million to 98.8 million in April. It may be that the concerns about Vista will be worth the bet. The stock was over $31 early in the year, but comments by Steve Ballmer to the effect that Vista sales were fine but not explosive took the shares down to below $27.

With its stock still below $29, MSFT has to demonstrate that Vista is beginnning to help its large OS and server software businesses. Results from its internet unit are likely to be poor. MSN continues to fall behind in search. Xbox figures should be good, but the numbers are not enough to have much weight against the overall topline.

Without a decent showing in software sales and strong guidance based on Vista, the shorts may have a good pay day.

Douglas A. McInytyre

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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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