AOL Money & Finance

Short sellers covered before earnings in top digital names (MSFT, GOOG, YHOO, ORCL)

More

It is always interesting to see the changes in short interest, particularly when you are right in the middle of earnings season. It seems the short sellers have gotten a little less confident on the "digital four" of the NASDAQ. In fact, the only one of the four that saw an increase was only a tiny increase.

As you will see below, the major components of the NASDAQ top digital companies saw real short covering ahead of earnings. Keeping conviction against stocks is frequent, but the lessons of eternal pessimism have historically shown to not be a winning strategy.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT)
Short Interest Change Avg, Day Vol. Days to Cover
04/15/2008 109,056,265 (7.88%) 48,450,376 2.25
03/31/2008 118,383,897 (3.82%) 57,762,166 2.05

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)
Short Interest Change Avg, Day Vol. Days to Cover
04/15/2008 4,905,775 (5.84%) 5,368,787 1.00
03/31/2008 5,210,156 7.07% 6,382,427 1.00

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO)
Short Interest Change Avg, Day Vol. Days to Cover
04/15/2008 36,104,797 (12.54%) 22,789,737 1.58
03/31/2008 41,280,401 (17.13%) 25,874,919 1.60

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL)
Short Interest Change Avg, Day Vol. Days to Cover
04/15/2008 42,655,256 2.94% 34,868,017 1.22
03/31/2008 41,436,043 6.57% 51,966,613 1.00

As Oracle's earnings are still a ways out, the need for traders to cover there probably wasn't as critical as it was otherwise.

Jon Ogg is an editor and producer of the "10 Stocks Under $10" weekly newsletter for 247WallSt.com.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-93.7910,197.47
NASDAQ-17.882,149.02
S&P 500-11.271,087.24

Last updated: November 12, 2009: 09:10 PM

BloggingStocks Exclusives

Hot Stocks

DailyFinance Headlines

Latest from BloggingBuyouts

TheFlyOnTheWall.com Headlines

BioHealth Investor Headlines

WalletPop Headlines

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance

WalletPop Headlines