NYSE Short Interest For Mid-December, Financial Stocks Up

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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For the December 14 period, short interest in financial stocks sky-rocketed compared to figures on November 30. Shares sold short in Citigroup (C) grew 20 million to 104.9 million. Shares short in MBIA (MBI) rose nine million to 39.2 million. Short interest in Countrywide (CFC) rose eight million to 139.2 million.

Shares sold short in Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac dropped.

Largest short positions

Company                                   Shares Sold Short

Ford (F)                                     148.7 million shares short

Countrywide                               139.2 million

Citigroup                                    104.9 million

Washington Mutual (WM)             91.1 million

Qwest (Q)                                   81.9 million

AMD (AMD)                                78.7 million

Largest Increases in Short Position

Company                                    Increase in shares short

Citigroup                                     20.0 million

MBIA                                           9.0 million

Countrywide                                 7.9 million

EMC (EMC)                                 7.2 million

Pfizer (PFE)                                 6.5 million

Amback (ABK)                             6.1 million

Largest Decreases in Short position

Company                                     Decrease in Shares Short

Fannie Mae (FNM)                        22.6 million drop in shares short

Freddie Mac (FRE)                       14.2 million drop

Ford (F)                                        9.5 million drop

Data from NYSE

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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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