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Short Interest In Banks Surges, Falls In Tech

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Short interest in major banks rose sharply for the period that ended on January 31.

Share short in Citigroup (NYSE:C) were up 11% to 439 million. The short interest in Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) rose by 18% to 327 million. Shares short in Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) were up 11% to 131 million and up 6% to 78 million in Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE). The short interest in AIG (NYSE:AIG) was up 12% to 30 million.

In the tech sector, shares sold short in Micron (NYSE:MU) fell 14% to 61 million. The short position in Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) dropped 19% to 32 million. Shares short in Marvel (NASDAQ:MRVL) fell 36% to 8 million. The short interest in Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) fell 33% to 9 million. Share short in Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) dropped 12% to 25 million.

Among other widely held stocks, the short interest in Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) rose 21% to 56 million. Shares sold short in Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) dropped 6% to 51 million. The short interest in Ford (NYSE:F) fell 14% to 165 million. Shares short in Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) rose 48% to 143 million. The short interest in GE (NYSE:GE) fell 14% to 66 million. Share short in AT&T (NYSE:T) fell 19% to 58 million.

Data from NYSE and NASDAQ.

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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