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• Stocks that won and lost in Nasdaq short interest

  Posted Apr 14 2008, 06:07 AM by Douglas McIntyre
  Filed under: Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo, E*Trade, Intel, Sirius, XM Satellite Radio, JetBlue, Dell, Take-Two Interactive, Electronic Arts
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  Most companies on Nasdaq did fairly well with the shorts in the two-week period which ended on March 31. The two tremendous exceptions were Level 3, where short interest moved up 20.3 million shares to 243.9 million, and Sirius, where shares sold short jumped 40.4 million to 137.8 million.

  In a tough stock market and credit environment, it is not hard to see why investors would place bets against both companies. Each stock trades near its 52-week low. Level 3 recently pushed out its president. Although it is in an attractive business, bandwidth infrastructure, it is a patch-work of M&A work with a large amount of debt and almost no cash-flow. In other words, a liquidation candidate in a deep recession.

  Sirius is also hurt by a high debt-load -- over $1.2 billion -- and negative operating income. If the company's merger with XM Satellite does not go through, it may not be able to survive as a standalone company either.   Read More...

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• Short interest jumps up at discount brokers

  Posted Dec 29 2007, 07:39 AM by Douglas McIntyre
  Filed under: E*Trade, Intel, Sirius
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  One of the most interesting sets of numbers that hits Wall Street every two weeks is short interest in stock traded on the major exchanges. The number represents bets being made against a stock going up and in favor of its falling. Several big names are usually high on the list, including Level 3, Sirius, and Intel.

  For the period ending December 14, shares sold short went way up for the three big discount brokers. It makes sense that E*Trade is on the list. It has had such significant problems with sub-prime financial instruments that its short interest at 53.7 million shares, up 3.9 million from the last measurement date on November 30, is understandable.

  But, shares sold short in Schwab moved up 6.1 million to 27.8 million for the period. At TDAmeritrade the short interest jumped by 8.2 million shares to 17.8 million.   Read More...

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