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Investing

NYSE Short Interet In Financial Shares Climbs

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Short interest on January 15 showed bets against financial shares listed on the NYSE climbed when compared to December 31 numbers.

Shares short in Countrywide Financial (CFC) rose 32.5 million to 166.9 million. Shares sold short in Washington Mutual (WM) moved up 37.5 million to 129.9 million. Shares short in Wachovia (WB) moved up 15.4 million to 81.7 million.

Shares short in some tech and telecom stocks fell. Short interest in IBM (IBM) dropped 4.7% to 12.9 million. Shares sold short in Qwest (Q) dropped 4.4 million to 84.5 million. Shares short in Verizon (VZ) dropped 2 million to 29 million.

Largest Short Positions.

Company                                         Shares Sold Short

Countrywide                                     166.9 million shares short

Ford (F)                                           154.7 million

Washington Mutual                           129.9 million

AMD (AMD)                                       91.8 million

Qwest                                               84.5 million

Wells Fargo (WFC)                            84.1 million

Wachovia                                          81.7 million

Micron (MU)                                      76.9 million

Home Depot (HD)                              70.7 million

Largest Increases In Share Sold Short

Company                                          Increase In Shares Short

Washington Mutual                           37.7 million share increase

Countrywide                                     32.5 million

Ford                                                16.1 million

Wachovia                                         15.3 million

SLM (SLM)                                      13.5 million

AMD                                               12.6 million

Largest Decrease In Shares Sold Short

Company                                         Decrease In Shares Short

GE (GE)                                          6.4 million decrease in shares short

Best Buy (BBY)                               5.7 million decrease

CVS (CVS)                                     5.0 miillion

IBM (IBM)                                       4.7 million

Qwest                                            4.4 million

Data from NYSE and WSJ

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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