Cashin: Why it’s about to get ugly  Is It Time to Sell These
Eight Stocks?     Text Size   Published: Thursday, 4 Mar 2010 |
11:48 AM ET Giovanny Moreano By: | Quantitative Analyst  While
the stock market continues to trade sideways, some investors
seem to be turning negative on a number of S&P 500 stocks.  The
latest data on short interest, the total number of shares of a
security that have been sold short expressed as a percent of
total tradable shares, depicts that this metric increased in the
past months for a number of companies, including Mylan , Zions
Bancorp and United States Steel .  In a short trade, investors
bet that the price of a stock will fall. Short-sellers borrow
shares and then sell them, hoping to repurchase the stock at a
lower price. Depending on the stock's performance after the
transaction, short-sellers repurchase the stock at the new
price, return it to the lender, and pocket or pay the
difference.  Among the most shorted stocks in the S&P index,
First Solar , a manufacturer of solar