NASDAQ Short Sellers Back Off Tech (INTC)(DELL)(YHOO)(JAVA)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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According to NASDAQ figures on short selling on February 29, share sold short in tech companies dropped sharply, an indication that investors are not willing to bet that stocks in the companies will go lower. The numbers compare to figures on February 14.

Shares sold short in Intel (INTC) dropped 5.8 million to 64.1 million. Shares short in Dell (DELL) fell 5.3 million to 47.1 million. Share short in PMC-Sierra dropped 3.7 million to 29 million. Yahoo!’s (YHOO) short interest fell 2.5 million to 52.8 million. Shares short in Apple (AAPL) dropped 2.2 million to 22.8 million. Shares short in Sun (JAVA) dropped 2.1 million to 17.8 million.

Some of the largest techs did not escape larger bets that they would drop. Shares short in Microsoft (MSFT) rose 3.4 million to 115.7 million, perhaps because of concerns about the Yahoo! deal. Shares short in Cisco (CSCO) increased 3.3 million to 48.6 million.

Largest Short Positions

Company                                      Shares Sold Short

Level 3 (LVLT)                               198.3 million

Microsoft                                      115.7 million

Sirius (SIRI)                                  100.2 million

Charter (CHTR)                              91.5 million

E*Trade (ETFC)                             87.7 million

Intel                                             64.1 million

Comcast                                      63.9 million

Yahoo!                                         52.8 million

Cisco                                           48.6 million

Dell                                              47.1 million

Data from Nasdaq and WSJ

Douglas A. McIntyre

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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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