Apple Short Interest Drops 4.7 Million Shares

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:39AM EST · Published Sep 13, 7:10AM EDT

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Apple Short Interest Drops 4.7 Million Shares — © Wikimedia Commons

[cnxvideo id=”509258″ placement=”ros”]Some short sellers have moved out of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), perhaps afraid of the effects of the iPhone 7 launch. Short interest in Apple dropped 4.7 million shares to 47.1 million for the period that ended on August 31.

The iPhone 7 was released in September. There are rumors Apple may not have enough supply to accommodate early demand. People already have started to line up near Apple stores. The rush to buy appears to be similar to earlier versions of the product.

Critics of the iPhone 7 think it is not much of an advance from the iPhone 6 family. Even if this is true, the Apple brand has trumped the problem. Apple says it will not announce early sales results, which it has done with ever other iPhone. Some analysts believe Apple will ship over 70 million units through the holidays until the end of the year.

Then there is the matter of Apple’s share price, which has surged 11% since July 26. That is enough to drive some short sellers into hiding.

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Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, said at the launch event:

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus dramatically improve every aspect of the iPhone experience, reaching a new level of innovation and precision to make this the best iPhone we have ever made. The completely redesigned cameras shoot incredible photos and videos day or night, the A10 Fusion chip is the most powerful chip on any smartphone while delivering the best battery life ever in an iPhone, and an entirely new stereo speaker system provides twice the sound, all within the first water and dust resistant iPhone.

Sales will prove if the statement is true and whether short sellers made the right decision.

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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.