Short Sellers At Odds With Analysts On Bank Of New York Mellon

• Analysts were pleased with the recent positive earnings surprise and guidance.
• But short sellers piled on the stock in the most recent settlement period.
• Note that top insiders have sold shares as well.

While Bank of New York Mellon Corp BK saw some analyst upgrades in the wake of its better-than-expected third-quarter report and its guidance last month, short sellers seemed to have other ideas. The number of shares short surged between the October 14 and October 31 settlement dates. Furthermore, note that the chairman and vice chairman together have sold more than $4.5 million worth of the shares recently.

Shares Short

This banking and financial services giant saw the number of its shares short soar 185 percent to more than 18.91 million shares in the final two weeks of month. That was still less than 2 percent of the total float, but the highest level of short interest since last March. At the most recently average daily volume, it would take about three days to cover all short positions.

Among the reasons for the analyst upgrades were the growth potential and a possible rate increase. The share price ended the two-week short interest period more than 9 percent higher, while the S&P 500 was down fractionally. Shares price hit a new 52-week high of $47.61 late last week and are up more than 13 percent year-to-date.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities. Image Credit: By GK tramrunner229 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1388705