Largest Oustanding Short Positions indicate more pain for Momentum Stocks (IB)

Interactive Brokers – popular among the ‘smart money’ crowd – released the top 15 outstanding short positions of their customer as of April 17.

Again the Momentum names appear on this list from last week: Tesla, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Yelp… most which have seen some heavy price drops this past week.

A new notable entry on the list:  Coeur d’Alene Mining (NYSE: CDM) :  This stock is 50% off its 52 week high of $17/share and is trading at a new low of $8.43.   When this many short sellers appear on a beaten down stock with negative revenue and no dividend, it’s usually a good sign that the company is cash strapped.

Another notable entry is Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) – the shorts are selling both A and C class shares alike.  Perhaps the recent stock split was a desperate move to keep the shares afloat in a deflationary advertising budget environment?  The amount of insider selling at Google would seem to indicate as much.

Top 15 Outstanding Short Positions as of 4/17:

https://wit1.interactivebrokers.com/images/insights/1958/losp042114.jpg

 

IB’s posts can be found here.

IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM)

— 10/17 – Signal:  EXIT:  +8.32% Profit

Our IBM short trade was right on the money.  The signal came at the top of the current down trend and 2 weeks before IBM announced dismal earnings after market close yesterday causing the stock to plummet 6% in after hours trading.

 

–9/26/2013

Symbol: IBM (NYSE)

Signal:  SHORT

New SHORT signal on IBM, which has reached the top of a large triangle on the daily time period.  We are noticing sell signals on a number of IT services companies, but this one was the strongest.  Profitable trading pattern goes back to 3/09/13.

Related analysis supporting position:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1664972-ibm-continued-struggles-in-the-cloud

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1628672-is-warren-buffetts-favorite-ibm-really-underperforming

 

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