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Investing

Short Sellers Up Bet Ahead Of Year-End Market Moves

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Short sellers have made a broad range of gambles that many large stocks will lose value before the end of the year, which indicates that they believe that markets will tumble in December.

A large number of mega-cap stocks had sharp interests in their short ratios in the period which ended November 15.

The short interest in Ford Motor (NYSE: F), which has run up on optimism about sales of its new models and the company’s ability to handle its huge debt, rose 15% to 324.7 million shares. Weakened wireless company Sprint-Nextel (NYSE: S) will not be able to compete against AT&T (NYSE T) and Verizon Wireless, if short sellers are right. Its short interest rose 52% to 131 million. Also-ran handset company Motorola (NYSE: MOT), which competes with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), saw its short interest increase 36% to 43.8 million.

Banks mostly held their own, but the short interest in what is considered the weakest money center bank, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), rose 12% to 110.9 million. The prospects of the oil industry as year-end approaches are also bleak if short sellers are right. Shares short in Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) rose 29% to 38.7 million.

Short sellers are avoiding the tech sector. Shares short in Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) fell 7% to 49.8 million. The short interest in Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), which recently reported good earnings, fell 13% to 41.6 million. The short interest in Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) dropped 16% to 39.2 million and shares sold short in Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) fell 13% to 28.6 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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