Short Interest Data: Lehman, BofA, Merrill and AIG

Unless you've been living on Mars, you will all know what is going on on this historic day on Wall Street. We are therefore here to bring you the short interest data for these troubled stocks.

Lehman (LEH), who have filed for bankruptcy, saw an enormous spike in short interest last week, presumably as short investors got wind of the possible catastrophe at the weekend. As you can see from this chart, the percentage of LEH's Market Cap on loan (%MCOL) increased from 10% to 18% between September 5 and 11. Utilisation jumped from 35% to 63% in the same time frame.

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There has been a general decrease in the short positions in Merrill Lynch (MER), from a %MCOL of 5% in early August to 2.6% today, although short interest has picked up from 2% on September 8th. Utilisation is at just 11% so there is plenty more left to borrow.

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Bank of America (BAC), who are due to buy Merrill, have just 2.58% MCOL, AIG (AIG) have 4.13%, Goldman Sachs (GS) have 2.47%, and Morgan Stanley (MS) have 2.43%. The stock with the highest percentage on loan is Washington Mutual (WM), with 24.68%.

Disclosure: None

Comments

[phdinsuntan...:]

which demonstrate that hyenas not always smell the rigth
rotten corpse after a massacre and can be eaten by an
sleeping lyon (MER).

2008 Sep 16 06:04 AM

[Richard Col...:]

I wonder how many companies would go under if the vultures (short interest) and their brokers didn't short them with no money down. Also where are all the bad managers coming from?
Daniel Kowkabany

2008 Sep 16 09:32 AM

[omooc:]

I thought LEH is among the 19 stocks whose short-sale is restricted. Apparently it is not so.

2008 Sep 16 10:00 PM