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Investing

Short Sellers Up Bets Against BP By 290%, Flee Other Weak Shares

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The short interest in BP plc (NYSE: BP) rose 290% to 25.7 million shares in the period ending June 15 as traders increased their bets that the UK-based oil company will face more problems that will undermine its share price.

However, short sellers moved out of the shares in several other weak companies. The short interest in Sprint-Nextel (NYSE: S) dropped 28% to 76.2 million shares. Shares short in airline AMR (NYSE: AMR) were down 18% to 32 million. The short interest in beleaguered financial firm Ambac (NYSE: ABK) dropped 8% to 71.7 million shares. Shares short in Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) dropped 17% to 23.7 million. The short interest in Monster Worldwide (NYSE: MWW) fell 17% to 20 million. Shares short in Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) fell 13% to 32.2 million. And, shares short in Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) fell 4% to 22.9 million.

Shares sold short in Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) rose 42% to 80.6 million. Shares short in Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) rose 25% to 50.4 million. The short interest in Ebay (NASDAQ: EBAY) rose 66% to 44 million. Shares sold short in Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) were up 12% to 27.8 million.

The short interest in Citigroup (NYSE: C) rose 14% to 487 million shares. Shares short in General Electric (NYSE: GE) rose 23% to 73.8 million. The short interest in AT&T (NYSE: T) was up 11% to 61.4 million.

Sources: 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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