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Investing

Short Sellers Target Big Financial Names (BAC)(AIG)(WFC)(FRE)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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bearShort sellers upped their investments in stocks of the most prominent financial firms. Short interest in Bank of America (BAC), AIG (AIG), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Freddie Mac (FRE) all rose for the period ending June 30.

Short sellers also increased position in several regional  banks. Short interest in KeyCorp (KEY) rose 31% to 38.1 million. Shares sold short in Regions Financial (RF) were up 13% to 65.9 million. Shares short in Bank of NY Mellon (BK) rose 31% to 14.2 million, and the short interest in Huntington Bancshares (HBAN) rose 75% to 58.8 million.

The increases in shares short in larger financials was, in some cases, very large. Shares short in AIG rose 33 million to 262 million. The short interest in Bank of America was up more than 13 million share to 109 million.  Shares short in Freddie Mac rose 14 million to 80 million. Shares short in Wells Fargo were up 6 million to 123 million.

Among the largest short positions for the period, shares short in Pfizer (PFE) were up 16% to 236 million. The short interest in Merck (MRK) rose 9% to 236 million. Shares short in AMD (AMD) rose 10% to 70 million, and the short interest in Sprint (S) was up 7% to 67 million.

Data from NYSE and Nasdaq.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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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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