Short sellers increase shorting in Target and Wal-Mart

Posted Jun 6th 2008 12:50PM by Jon Ogg
Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Short Stories, Target Corp. (TGT)

Short sellers have increased their activity in Wal-Mart Stores inc. (NYSE: WMT) and in Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), although it seems that Wal-Mart is looking less targeted, compared to the prior short sale reports.

At the end of May, its short interest was 51,073,300 shares versus 49,535,900 in the reading before.

Elsewhere, short sellers also raised their efforts against Target, as its new short reading is 49,754,100 shares versus 44,418,500.

So it seems that the 3.1% increase in Wal-Mart short selling versus the 12% gain in short selling at Target puts the recession-winner in the lead again as far as which company is the place to hide out in during a recession.

Wal-Mart has definitely been the beneficiary of the "trading down" environment in consumers right now and shares are only about 1% under their 52-week highs.

Tags: shart selling, short interest, ShortInterest, TGT, WMT