Short Sellers Taking Heat in Semiconductor Stocks July 2007

Stock Tickers: AMD, SMH, TXN, TER, ADI, LSI, MU, CY, NSM, TSM, STM, IFX

Tech stocks kept rising from June to July, yet the short sellers were beligerent.  They must have loads of money, because on individual short selling in stocks they lost more and more money if this trend remained static as it looks.  Short selling increased overall on the NYSE as seen on the NYSE notice, but this went above and beyond.  Here was a sector breakdown for the May to June period for 2007 if you want to compare. Here are the chip stock results for the major chip names listed on NYSE:

Advanced Micro (AMD) grew from 73.78M in June to 81.25M in July; Texas Instruments (TXN) grew from 30.6M in June to 33.3M in July; LSI Logic (LSI) grew from 43.77M in June to 49.75M in July; Micron (MU) grew from 50.37M in June to 59.99M in July, National Semi (NSM) went from high to higher after growing from 52.93M in June to 59.3M in July; Cypress Semi (CY) saw its 15.49M in June grow to 17.52M in July, Analog Devices (ADI) saw its 7.77M in June grow to 9.05M in July; Taiwan Semi (TSM) saw its 13.73M in June grow to 14.05M in July.

There were a few standouts as far as the actual drop in the short interest.  The most interesting drop out there came in the Semiconductor HOLDRs (SMH) as the short interest fell from 35.2M in June down to 25.6M in July, so go figure.  Teradyne (TER) fell from 14.2M in June to 13.05M in July; STMicro (STM) saw its short interest drop from 3.7M in June down to 2.89M in July;

Jon C. Ogg
July 20, 2007

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