Short sellers pulled out of telecom stocks for the period ending on July 30, after many of them reported weak earnings. Investors are gambling that most of these shares are not likely to fall further.
The short interest in AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) dropped by 15% to 47.5 million. Beaten down shares in Nokia (NYSE: NOK) did not keep short sellers from dropping their negative bet by 14% to 57.6 million shares. Shares short in Frontier Communications (NYSE: FTR) dropped 12% to 45.1 million. The short interest in Motorola (NYSE: MOT) dropped 9% to 36.8 million. The short interest in Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) was down 11% to 24.5 million.
In the tech sector, the short interest in most stocks fell with the exception of faltering firms Qualcomm (NYSE: QCOM) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Shares short in Qualcomm were higher by 20% to 31.1 million. The short interest in Nvidia was up 34% to 42.2 million.
Shares short in Microsoft Corporation (NYSE: MSFT) fell 9% to 85.2 million. The short interest in Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) fell 4% to 55.6 million. The short interest in Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) fell 2% to 41.6 million, and shares short in Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) dropped by 2% to 36.4 million.
Among other shares with large short positions, Sirius XM (NYSE: SIRI) dropped 4% to 208.6 million. The short interest in Level 3 (NASDAQ: LVLT) dropped 2% to 97.3 million. Shares short in Citigroup (NYSE: C) fell 2% to 438.9 million, the largest short position of any public company. Shares short on Ford Motor (NYSE: F) rose 3% to 281 million, and the short interest in Back of America (NYSE: BAC) rose 18% to 123.5 million.
Date from NYSE and NASDAQ.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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