Apple Short Interest Drops Despite Share Price Problems

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:07PM EST · Published Jan 13, 6:41AM EST

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Apple Short Interest Drops Despite Share Price Problems — © courtesy of Apple Inc.

The short interest in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) dropped 8.1% in the period that ended December 31 to 68.2 million. Apple ranks eighth on the list of most shorted shares of companies traded on Nasdaq.

The size of the short bet tapered off despite deep and growing concern about Apple’s momentum, particularly in terms of iPhone sales. In the past month, its share price has dropped 11.1% to $100, and it is down 9% for the past year. That compares to a gain of 114.1% over the past five years, as well as to a 74.2% improvement in the S&P 500 over the same period.

Although several analysts have upgraded Apple recently, the overall sentiment has been poor. Forbes summed up the problem:

BMO Capital, Canaccord Genuity, Cowen, JMP Securities and Pacific Crest decreased their estimates and price targets for Apple. BMO’s Tim Long cut his price target from $142 to $133, Canaccord Genuity’s Michael Walkley cut his from $160 to $146, Cowen’s Timothy Arcuri went from $130 to $125, Alex Gauna went from $165 to $150 and Andy Hargreaves cut his from $142 to $132.

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All made their decisions based to some extent on a projected slowdown or drop in sales of the previously white-hot iPhone 6 family of smartphones.

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.