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Investing

Short Sellers Hope Silicon Valley Gets Mauled

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Short sellers are making large bets that tech shares have reached their high point and are likely to sell off based on data from the NASDAQ and NYSE as of April 30.

Shares short in Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ” MSFT) were up 30% to 70.3 million. The short interest in Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) moved up 17% to 34.2 million. The short interest in Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK), former home of Carol Bartz, rose 25%, and shares sold short at her current company Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) were up 5% to 39.2 million. Shares short in Research-in-Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) were up 11% to 16 million. Shares sold short in Amazon.com Inc. were up 11% to 12 million. Shares short in Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Ciena (NASDAQ: CIEN) also rose.

Shares short in consumer-facing companies dropped. The short interest in Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) dropped 16% to 46.8 million. Shares sold short in Starwood were down 27% to 15.3 million. The short interest in Macy’s (NYSE: M) 21% to 20.1 million. Shares short in Gannett (NYSE: GCI) were down 17% to 25.6 million The short interest in Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) was down 30% to 15.7 million. Shares short in Sara Lee (NYSE: SLE) fell 22% to 26.1 million. The only really large consumer products company that had a large increase in shares sold short was Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) — up 11% to 286.5 million.

The largest short interest in any public company was Citigroup’s (NYSE: C), at 482 million, up 16%.

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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