The cut-off for the last short interest data was September 15, before a number of financial stocks got protection from the SEC. Before the ban, short sellers were already moving out of some bank and brokerage shares. Fannie Mae (FNM), Freddie Mac (FRE), Citigroup (C), and Bank of America (BAC) all had big drops in total shares sold short. The only large spike up in the group was Washington Mutual where the short interest spiked 12% to 429 million shares.

Short sellers moved their money elsewhere with the primary target being technology shares.

Shares sold short in Nokia (NOK) moved up over 70% to 23.8 million. Short interest in Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) was up 25% to 34.4 million. Share short in Western Digital (WDC) jumped 28% to 22.2 million shares. The short interests in AMD (AMD) and Texas Instruments (TXN) also rose.

Nasdaq-based techs were not spared. Shares short in Intel (INTC) moved up 33% to 91.7 million. The short interest in Microsoft (MSFT) rose 27% to 61.3 million shares. Short interest in Cisco (CSCO) was up 10% to 67.7 million shares. Even Apple (AAPL) was hit hard with shares short up 24% to 25.7 million.

Oracle (ORCL) was one of the few big tech companies which saw a significant drop in short interest, down 41% to 34.3 million. Shares short in Sun (JAVA) and Dell (DELL) also dropped over 20%.

Data from NYSE and Nasdaq.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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