NYSE, NASDAQ Short Interest Drops in First Half of December

Short interest in stocks listed on both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ dropped in the first half of December versus the previous two-week period, according to the exchanges' semimonthly report. Nasdaq's short interest declined 4.7% to 6.93 billion shares of 2,754 Nasdaq securities, down from 7.27 billion shares of 2,747 securities in the earlier period. NYSE's short interest fell 5.2% to 13.54 billion shares, from 14.27 billion in the previous period.