The short interest in the actively traded cult stocks and in some of the low-priced high-volume stocks saw some significant changes. We compared the November 15 settlement date to the October 31 settlement date, and we added color if applicable.

Here we look at the following active cult stocks and low-priced short interest reports: Alcatel Lucent S.A. (NYSE: ALU), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ: DNDN), Diamond Foods Inc. (NASDAQ: DMND), Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ: GMCR), Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN), Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), RadioShack Corp. (NYSE: RSH), Research In Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM), Sirius XM Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) and Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA).

Alcatel Lucent S.A. (NYSE: ALU) saw a drop in the short interest to 17.58 million shares as of mid-November, versus 18.21 million shares short at the end of October. Shares have bounced 14% over the past week.

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) had been seeing drop after drop in its short interest. That was then. Now it saw its mid-November short interest rise up to 203.8 million shares from 186.1 million shares at the end of October. This is a gain of 9.5% in the short interest.

Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ: DNDN) saw a drop of about 3% in the short interest to 45.68 million shares, versus 47.16 million shares. This is still very close to the year high in the short interest at Dendreon.

Diamond Foods Inc. (NASDAQ: DMND) saw only a marginal drop in the short interest to 7.629 million shares, versus  7.71 million shares at the end of October.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) saw another large gain, and this is an all-time high as the lockup expiration played a part. Now you know the recent rally was aided by short covering. The new short interest for mid-November is 95.3 million shares. This was 87.988 million shares last time and 73.38 million shares before that.

First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) saw another drop in the short interest to 25.85 million shares from 28.2 million shares. This is the lowest short interest since June.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ: GMCR) saw yet one more gain in the short interest to 51.445 million shares as of mid-November, and now you know that the fresh rally is aided at least in part by short covering. This was 49.7 million shares short at the end of October, and that was already a high in the short selling for this stock. The days to cover is now at 16.6, also a record for 2012.

Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN) saw another sharp gain with its short interest rising by 20% to 43.53 million shares in mid-November. This was 36 million shares in the short interest at the end of October. This new reading is the third highest short interest of 2012 for the coupon website.

Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) saw short sellers jump out of the way after Carl Icahn got involved here. The short interest fell by almost 12% to 15.175 million shares in mid-November. This is the lowest reading since mid-August.

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) saw a drop of only about 1% in the short interest, down to 309.3 million shares as of mid-November. This is still grossly elevated and close to the year high in the short interest. To prove the point, this was the highest days to cover as it is now over 10.8 days to cover.

RadioShack Corp. (NYSE: RSH) was up but unchanged for all practical purposes as those shorts who are short are standing pat and the new short sellers have decided to look elsewhere: the short interest in mid-November was 36.89 million shares versus 36.825 million shares at the end of October. Due to volume compression, the days to cover is now a whopping 23.7 days to cover, and that is a record metric for 2012.

Research In Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) has been on a recovery, and the short interest is obviously playing a factor here. The short interest grew by more than 9% to 104.2 million shares as of November 15. That is a record for total shares volume in the short interest for 2012, although the 4.5 days to cover is not a 2012 record.

Sirius XM Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) saw tiny drop and is by and large unchanged, but that follows a prior gain in the short interest. The new short interest is 296.2 million shares, down marginally from 297.8 million shares at the end of October but still way up from the 274.8 million shares short in mid-October.

Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA) saw another drop on the heels of a rather large drop seen before. The short interest fell to 10.89 million shares from 12.77 million shares at the end of October. In mid-October this was 19.33 million shares in the short interest and that is way down from over 56 million shares short in May.

JON C. OGG

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