Nasdaq Short Position For October, Sun (JAVA) Shows Huge Improvement

Investing

Published: October 25, 2007 6:03 am

Below are the short positions for major companies traded on the Nasdaq as of October 15. The figures compare to numbers on September 28, 2007

Traders bet big on Sun’s turnaround, dropping their short positions by over 24 million shares to 40 million. They also bet that the Oracle takeover of BEA Systems would not happen increasing shares short in BEAS by 4 million.

Shorts were right to move into Level 3 in large numbers. Its earnings were a disaster. But, they moved out of Microsoft, perhaps a sign that Wall St. is starting to believe that the company’s internet and game strategies may pay-off.

Largest Short Positions

Company Shares Sold Short

Level 3 (LVLT) 139 million

Charter (CHTR) 94 million

Sirius (SIRI) 85.1 million

Microsoft (MSFT) 75.4 million

Intel (INTC) 74.6 million

Yahoo! (YHOO) 58.1 million

Comcast (CMCSA) 45.6 million

Sun (JAVA) 40.3 million

Oracle (ORCL) 38.7 million

Symantec (SYMC) 35.7 million

Amazon (AMZN) 35.3 million

Largest Increase In Shares Sold Short

Company Increase In Shares Short

Level 3 10 million share increase

Yahoo! 6.3 million

BEA Systems (BEAS) 4 million

E*Trade 3.6 million

Charter 3 million

Largest Decrease In Short Position

Company Decrease In Short Position

Sun 24.6 million decrease

Nvidia (NVDA) 6.8 million

Microsoft 5.5 million

Comcast 4.9 million

Sandisk (SNDK) 4.6 million

Dell (DELL) 4.2 million

Oracle 2.9 million

Data from Nasdaq and WSJ

Douglas A. McIntre

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