Major March Short Interest Increases (CSCO, LOGI, MCRL, PRXL, PTEN, SPLS, JAVA, TROW, YRCW)

We routinely look over major changes in short interest from period to period.  While the more frequent twice-monthly reporting is conducted by exchanges, it sometimes gives a little insight into the psyche of traders and trends.  The most important issue to look at is in the larger and more active names that have large positions that grew rapidly in percentage terms.

We screened many different names after the short interest data came out last night from NASDAQ, so we looked for a minimum of 5 million shares short and we looked for those names whose short interest grew by more than 30%.  These are not all of the names, but here is a representation of the screen:

Comapny (Ticker)                              MARCH 14     FEB 29       CHANGE
Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO)          73,069,889   48,631,811    50.25%
Logitech International (LOGI)           8,017,620    5,464,404     46.72%
Micrel, Incorporated (MCRL)             7,719,618    5,242,192     47.26%
PAREXEL International (PRXL)        6,204,152    3,137,862     97.72%
Patterson-UTI Energy (PTEN)         14,068,305    9,336,158    50.69%
Staples, Inc. (SPLS)                          20,708,717   15,097,693   37.16%
Sun Microsystems (JAVA)                23,630,955   17,562,322   34.55%
T. Rowe Price Group (TROW)         15,997,024   11,341,287   41.05%
YRC Worldwide, Inc. (YRCW)          22,782,135   16,007,172   42.32%

Jon C. Ogg
March 27, 2008

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter and can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.