Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ: GMCR) has enjoyed a stellar run higher in 2009, with the shares up 105% year-to-date.

Today, the company announced that its board has approved a three-for-two stock split in the form of a stock dividend. All shareholders of record as of May 29 will receive one additional share of GMCR common stock for every two shares currently held, with distribution scheduled for June 8.

"This stock dividend allows us to share our success with our loyal stockholders to the extent of our authorized stock and underscores our confidence in the strength of our Company and its prospects for the future," said President and CEO Larry Blanford in a statement.

Late last Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Defense Department has ordered Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT) to cease work on a $13 billion contract to build helicopters for the White House.

The move was widely expected, since the Obama administration has previously pointed to the revamped copters as an example of excessive defense spending. However, the contract's cancellation will no doubt bring fresh job losses to Owego, NY, where the Marine One copter is being designed.

Coal concern Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. (NYSE: ANR) has spiked more than 20% today on the heels of its first-quarter earnings report. The company reported a 61% improvement in net income, which rose to $41 million, or 58 cents per share, compared to $25.5 million, or 39 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2008.

Revenue for the period inched higher to $424.4 million. ANR's profit easily exceeded Wall Street's expectations; analysts were looking for a profit of 48 cents per share on $515.5 million.

ANR gapped higher with the sound of the opening bell today, extending its year-to-date advance of 56.4%. If the stock keeps climbing, it could soon have a chance to challenge resistance from its 10-month moving average, which is currently hovering in the $33 neighborhood.

In a distinctly depressing sign of the times, BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc. (NYSE: BJ) announced today that it will begin accepting food stamps as payment at all 180 of its retail locations. Food-stamp payments will be processed through the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system.

"BJ's recognizes the diverse financial status and changing needs of its members," commented president and CEO Laura Sen in a statement. "We are proud to help members stretch their food budgets by offering savings on a large selection of fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and baked goods, along with name-brand, non-perishable staples."

Tech stock VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) is broadly higher today on the heels of an upbeat note from Goldman Sachs. VMW was added to the brokerage firm's Conviction Buy list, with Goldman noting an expected boost in sales. The firm also thinks that VMW is better-positioned than many of its competitors to ride out the economic recession.

In addition to the Conviction Buy nod, Goldman also hiked its price target on VMW to $29, representing a premium of 22.8% to the equity's Tuesday closing price. The stock could attract additional price-target increases during the short term, as Thomson Reuters pegs its average 12-month target from analysts as $23.31 -- a modest discount to yesterday's close.

Shares of trendy retailer The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE: BKE) are climbing today, boosted by a better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings report. Net income rose 18% to $34.3 million, or 74 cents per share, while gross margin swelled to 46.1%. Ahead of the report, analysts were expecting a quarterly profit of 73 cents per share.

The Buckle reported that net sales for the quarter increased by 22% to $251.4 million, thanks to a 14.3% spike in same-store sales. Sales at stores open for at least one year escalated 21% in February, marking the 19th consecutive month of double-digit same-store sales growth.

The shares of Geron Corporation (NASDAQ: GERN) rocketed sharply higher on Jan. 23, when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval for the world's first clinical trial of human stem cells. Now, GERN has collected an impressive year-to-date gain of 57.8%. However, CEO Thomas Okarma isn't feeling too complacent with his stock's respectable rally. He told Reuters Tuesday, "If this were a normal macro environment, our stock would have tripled with this kind of advance."

No doubt, the FDA's timing could have been better, since Okarma says more money is needed for academic stem cell research -- and demands on federal funding have rarely been greater. "There's no question that there are a lot of big fish in the Washington frying pan these days," commented the CEO. He's calling for the establishment of a presidential commission on stem cell policy to keep the industry on Washington's radar.

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.

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.

Cable stocks have fallen sharply and most trade near 52-week lows, but that is not keeping short sellers from continuing to believe that they could go lower. The short interest in Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and Charter (NASDAQ: CHTR) went up on December 14 compared to November 30 according to data from Nasdaq.

The slide in cable shares began around mid-year, when comments from Comcast indicated that the new TV-over-fiber products from telecom companies like Verizon (NYSE: VZ) were starting to take cable customers. Up until recently, cable was able to market voice, TV,and broadband as one package into the home. The telephone companies could not match that. But fiber installations have changed the picture, and competition is fierce.

Cable companies are starting to see slowing growth in their subscriber bases. That could push them to drop rates, and it is forcing them into capital expenditures to improve the speed of their own networks. Both moves put pressure on earnings.

A look at the Nasdaq short interest on December 14, compared to November 30, shows that bets against discount brokers rose sharply. Short interest in E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC): moved up 3.9 million shares to 53.7 million, according to data from the exchange. That might have been expected, given the financial company's problems with mortgage related securities.

But, shares short in TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ: AMTD) jumped 8.2 million shares to 17.8 million, and short interest in Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW) moved up by 6.1 million shares to 28.7 million. Both figures are a fairly large percentage increase.

The simple explanation for the rise may be that both stocks have done better than financial shares as a whole and are ready for a pull-back. Schwab's stock is up over 30% this year. Ameritrade is up just under 25%.

But there are two other possible explanations, both a bit more unsettling. One is that a bear market would likely hurt earnings at discount brokers. A recession early next year could cause individual investors to pull in their horns. The other theory is that the two firms could have balance sheet problems of their own. This is less likely, since neither company has made any disclosures to that effect.

Whatever the reason, a fairly large amount of money is being gambled that the discount brokerage stocks have peaked.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

While many financial stocks experienced turmoil recently, it appears that NYSE short selling has been mixed and in some key stocks the short sellers drastically trimmed their positions. These changes were from the November 30 reading to the new date of December 14. The raw number of more active financial stocks saw an increase in short selling, as you can see below:

STOCK (Ticker)	DEC 14, 2007	NOV 30, 2007
Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC)	139,211,619	131,258,613
Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) - (2008 Dogs of the Dow stock)	104,873,159	84,849,090
Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC)	67,128,867	64,840,618
Wachovia (NYSE: WB)	46,359,867	45,420,765
MBIA Inc (NYSE: MBI)	39,207,847	30,185,705
Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH)	37,061,479	34,055,324
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM)	30,936,347	33,187,514
Ambac Financial (NYSE: ABK)	30,120,143	24,029,144
Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER)	28,948,649	25,080,570

A lot of traders believe that financial shares have further to fall. A look at the NYSE short interest in companies listed on the exchange show very large increases in the shares sold short in Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM), Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC), Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM), and several other banks.

The comparisons for short interest are based on numbers as of November 30 versus November 15.

Investors are still skeptical about Fannie Mae. Shares short in the company moved up 26.6 million to 50.6 million. Such a large percentage increase is unusual, but with the company cutting its dividend and raising money, all of the bad news may not be out.

Countrywide's short interest is now 138.3 million shares, second among all NYSE stocks after Ford (NYSE: F). The CFC short interest moved up 18.8 million shares. Traders are still willing to bet that the company's fourth quarter could be weaker than expected.

Even money center banks are not immune to investors who are looking for more share sell-offs. Short interest in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) has now risen to 64.8 million shares, up 11.2 million shares in two weeks.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The short interest in Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) fell by 11.8 million shares to 54.3 million between October 31 and November 15, according to figures from the Nasdaq. The stock has never really recovered from poor earnings late last year and the perception that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will suck up a huge share of internet ad dollars. Yahoo!'s stock was over $43 in early 2006, but now trades at only $25.59.

To some extent, believing that Yahoo!'s shares will rise is believing that all internet advertising will continue to rise quickly. Yahoo!'s quarterly numbers show that its revenue is actually not growing as fast as online advertising in general, a rate that is put at about 20% year-over-year. But the company has moved to make acquisitions that will allow it to target display advertising better, and its Panama search ad platform has received at least modest reviews from customers.

The problem with gambling that Yahoo! can do better is that its performance does lag online revenue in general, and there is a perception that a recession could slow the flow of all internet dollars. Yahoo!'s modest growth rate might get worse. And its share of the U.S. search market is not really improving. Yahoo! sits at about 20%, while Google's monthly numbers run closer to 60%.

The market was also excited about Yahoo!'s big stake in China e-commerce company Alibaba. The firm went public last month, and, at one point, the U.S. company's piece of the IPO was worth over $5 billion. But Wall Street figured out that selling such a large stake was impossible. And Alibaba's shares did drop.

Yahoo! may not be going up and some shorts may get burned.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

It is usually an interesting read to see what is going on in overall NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ short selling. Today we looked over various short interest reports based upon November 15, 2007, on the NYSE, which is fresh data for U.S. traders because of the Thanksgiving holiday. The total NYSE Short Interest went up from 11.932 billion shares on October 31 up to 12.387 billion shares as of November 15. This is the second increase in a row but within recent month data.

Below is a summary of some key NYSE short interest changes:

Stock	(Ticker)	11/15/2007	10/31/2007	%Change
Corning	(NYSE: GLW)	12,678,622	16,112,839	-21.31%
EMC 	(NYSE: EMC)	50,028,872	61,281,674	-18.36%  
VMware	(NYSE: VMW)	11,681,831	10,440,110	+11.89%

There were also many key net share changes in short interest, and here are a few of the key names:

Stock		(Ticker)	11/15/2007	10/31/2007	Net Change
CVS Caremark 	(NYSE: CVS)	67,661,461	37,871,140	+29,790,321
Mirant Corp 	(NYSE: MIR)	50,241,294   	23,796,710   	+26,444,584
Qwest Comm. 	(NYSE: Q) 	66,747,528   	82,000,170   	-15,252,642
General Electric(NYSE: GE) 	61,608,091   	66,708,279   	-5,100,188

Out of financials, Countrywide Financial NYSE:CFC) led the charge with more than 112 million shares. Here are some expanded short interest notes:

• Financial and general
• Key decreases in NYSE short interest
• Key increases on NYSE short interest