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Investing

Short Sellers Bet Against Tech And Apple

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Most technology company first quarter earnings have been relatively good. Businesses and consumers have begun to return to the market for servers, PCs, and software. The demand for smartphones and tablets is nothing short of extraordinary. Tech may be in the midst of a period of success which it has not had since well before the recession.

Short sellers do not believe the tech story. This may be because the values of many stocks in the sector are up so much. It may be because the shorts think the  economy is about to slow and tech sales will suffer along with it.

The short interest in most of the largest tech stocks rose in the period that ended on April 29.

Shares short in Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) were up 15% to 71.5 million. The short interest in Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) rose 20% to 29.8 million, so enterprise tech stocks have not been spared. Shares short in Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) rose 15% to 31.3 million. Surprisingly, the short interest in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) rose more on a percentage basis than RIM’s–up 16% to 13.3 million.

Shares short in Akamia (NASDAQ: AKAM) rose 59% to 8.7 million. The short interest in Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) was up 16% to 22 million. Shares sold short in security software company Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) rose 42% to 8.9 million. The short interest in Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) was up 10% to 26 million.

Shares short in NetApp (NASDAQ : NTAP) were up 10% to 20.7 million, and the short interest in Aruba Networks (NASDAQ: ARUN) was up 14% to 11.5 million.

Ironically, the shares sold short in America’s weakest large tech company, AMD (NYSE: AMD), fell 3% to 60.5 million.

Data from NASDAQ and NYSE

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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