Disputing Apple's 'Large' Short Position

This sampling of blog posts from Doug Kass was originally published today on Street Insight. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com readers. For more information about subscribing to Street Insight, please click here.

Dueling Over Apple
1/22/2007 10:15 AM EST

Jim "El Capitan" Cramer wrote about Apple (AAPL Quote) this morning, and I'd like to respond.

One thing that I want to immediately dispute is his statement that Apple's short position is large. It is not!

The float at Apple is 850 million shares -- only 24.5 million shares are short (a lowly 2.9% of the float). Moreover, with average trading volume of 70 million shares, (over the last 10 days) and 32.3 million shares of average trading volume (over the last three months), the short ratio is also a lowly 0.90.

Game on, Jimmy!

No positions in stocks mentioned

Start of Citigroup Separation?
1/22/2007 9:30 AM EST

There is a lot of speculation about the implications and reasons for the management change made today at Citigroup (C Quote).

As most know, Sallie Krawcheck is leaving her CFO post to become CEO and chairman of the Global Wealth Management Group. From my perch this might not be a promotion or a demotion for Krawcheck; rather it might be a precursor to a split-up of Citigroup. This is something we wrote about in December in our Surprise List for 2007:

2. Robert E. Rubin returns to his brokerage roots and becomes the CEO and chairman of Salomon Brothers/Smith Barney after Citigroup (C) decides to break up into three separate companies: a domestic money center bank (Citibank), investment banking/retail brokerage (Salomon Brothers/Smith Barney) and international consumer finance (Citiglobal).

No positions in stocks mentioned

Is the iPhone Just a Phone? Part IV
1/22/2007 8:50 AM EST

Last week I spent a lot of time discussing some reservations I had with several of the features of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone and I questioned the hype which contributed to a sharp rise in Apple's equity capitalization. (See Parts I, II and III).