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Strategies & Market Trends : Technology Stocks & Market Talk With Don Wolanchuk -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: da_cheif™ who wrote (26570)	7/11/2007 7:45:38 AM
From: catflu2™	Respond to of 206958

so then you already own it from way back....

To: da_cheif™ who wrote (26570)	7/11/2007 7:48:33 AM
From: dvdw©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206958

Hedge Funds Boost S&P 500 Short Sales, Merrill Says By Alexis Xydias July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Hedge funds are short-selling Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures by the most in three years, giving investors an opportunity to buy the securities before the funds have to settle their debts, a Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst said. ``Large speculators'' had the biggest net short-interest positions on the contracts in the week through July 3 since mid- 2004, Mary Ann Bartels, Merrill's chief market analyst, wrote in a report to clients today. The bets, which speculate that the index is going to fall, require about $45 billion to buy back the securities for reimbursement and return to a previous ``long'' position, Merrill estimated. Short positions have reached ``crowded levels'' and ``we view this as a contrary indicator and readings continue to be bullish for stocks,'' Bartels wrote in the weekly Hedge Fund Monitor report. ``Short levels provide a floor on price.'' Merrill, the world's biggest brokerage, used data provided by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's weekly Commitments of Traders report. In a short sale, investors borrow securities to sell on the expectation they will be able to repurchase them for less. The number of short-interest positions on the New York Stock Exchange climbed last month to 3.3 percent of total outstanding shares, the highest since the exchange starting providing the date in 1995. Each share that is borrowed creates a repurchase obligation that may lift prices, a process that is known as ``short covering.'' Bartels's team, based in New York, tracks hedge funds' investments in index futures for the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100 and the Russell 2000 Index to produce so-called technical and quantitative analysis. Russell 2000 Shorts Bartels and Shan Hasnat, the other analyst who wrote the report, weren't immediately available to comment. Also in the week through July 3, short positions on the Russell 2000, a benchmark for U.S. smaller-capitalization stocks, reached the most since at least 2002, on a net basis, the Merrill report showed. Funds could spend about $13 billion for the securities, the note said. Funds covered positions in Nasdaq-100 futures during the week, Merrill said, with potential buying standing at $3.2 billion. The S&P 500 index has almost doubled since October 2002, when it was at its lowest level in 5 1/2 years. Merrill Lynch also analyzed the week's flows of money from long-short hedge funds, investment vehicles that can both short- sell and hold securities. The funds kept their investments below the average for the past year, to reduce the risk of market fluctuations, the note said. bloomberg.com