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Investing

Short Interest In Troubled Companies Rises (C, SIRI, LNKD, WFC)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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After a period in which short sellers backed out of stocks in troubled companies, the have rushed into them again.

The short interest in Research-In-Motion (NYSE: RIMM), battered by competition from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android rose 15% to 46.3 million. Shares short in Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI), which recently posted weak subscriber sales, rose 10% to 277 million shares. The short interest in Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) rose 29% to 12.8 million

Probably in anticipation of earnings that would push shares lower after a tremendous run, the short interest in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) rose 45% to 24.7 million. The bet was a smart one. Quarterly numbers were weak enough to push the stock down by over 35%.

Shares sold short in major bank shares moved very little. The short interest in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) fell 6% to 190 million. The short interest in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) was down 12% to 55.4 million. Shares sold short in Citigroup (NYSE: C) fell 58.9 million.

Stocks under tremendous pressure because the short position was such a large portion of their floats included LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) which at 36%. Short interest as percent of float at Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) was 36% The percent of float for newspaper chain McClatchy (NYSE: MCI) was 44 days. For Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK), the number was 25%.

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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