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

Interestingly enough, though, there were some major drops in short interest. At the end of November, I had noted how Rich Pzena of Pzena Capital had noted there was actually significant long-term value in Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) in a presentation at the Value Investing Congress. It appears that after major price drops in November, short sellers declared victory on the key Government Sponsored Entities (GSE's):

STOCK (Ticker) -- DEC 14, 2007 -- NOV 30, 2007
Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) -- 27,966,738 -- 50,553,635
Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) -- 20,658,388 -- 34,805,691

There were also some slight decreases to short interest in some of the other major financial stocks: JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) (one of the 2008 Dogs of the Dow stock), Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM), and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).