Going into earnings season it is always interesting to see which stocks have the highest short interest. The reason for that is if there are any "surprises" to the upside, these tend to be the stocks that take off like a rocket as shorts are forced to cover (buy).

Courtesy of Bespoke blog we have an interesting list below - including many names we discuss, cover, or have shorted from time to time!

(click to enlarge)



A couple notes on some of these names

Mylan ( ) is a generic drug maker that we were once long; it really took off in April (considering its a low volatility name) but has been slowly drifting back down since Ciena ( ) is an old long of ours, in the optical networking field... I prefer some of the names we've owned in different parts of the networking path I had not looked at Intuitive Surgical ( ) in ages, and until a week ago its chart was actually quite strong, but it fell off a cliff Wynn Resorts ( ) we went negative on the whole casino group in 2007 but at the time we could not short individual names, so we missed out on profiting off the 80%+ drops in many of these names. Instead we tried to short in April and got our bell rung.

I tried to short it again late last week but it just missed my limit order, so instead we have a peer which has worked out nicely in a very short amount of time. Almost from day 1, as we anticipated a damaged US consumer, we've been against Harley Davidson ( ); they report tomorrow. Same for Whole Foods Market ( ) - the company best suited for the house ATM era when middle class could shop way over their head. Same idea with Whirpool ( ) which has the additional 'benefits' of debt and pensions to deal with. I am surprised to see Diamond Offshore ( ) here.... AutoNation (AN) I'd like to buy at a lower level, been stalking it for 3-4 months only to see it to either rally or go sideways on corrections. Lots of homebuilders on the list.