5 More Stocks Under Attack

Everyone loves a winner. So it's reasonable to assume that everyone hates a loser. Yet with investing, that's not always the case.

Contrarian investors love to pick through stocks that others have cast away. Value investors are the garbage-divers of the marketplace. Conversely, when stocks have a big run-up, some investors like to bet against them. They're called short-sellers, and they bet that a stock is primed for a fall.

What goes up must come down
Here's a list of stocks on the Nasdaq exchange that reported having some of the largest short interest positions in June. We'll turn to the collective intelligence of the Motley Fool CAPS community to learn which of these stocks -- if any -- Foolish investors think have the power to make short work of short sellers.

Of course, this isn't a list of stocks to buy -- or short! Maybe these stocks have some serious problems that warrant the high short interest. Maybe not. What do you think? Will they be squeezed?

Tapping the CAPS advantage
Over on CAPS, more than 60,000 investors are looking over these same stocks. Some they like, some they don't, and they vote on how they feel about them. Sometimes, though, the stocks CAPS players like cross swords with those that short-sellers don't.

Most of the names here are familiar to us from the last time we looked at the list, meaning that short-sellers continue to dislike the prospects for these companies. While it looks like the short-sellers have abated their attack on Microsoft and Sirius, since the number of shares short fell, it's also true that both stocks have been having a rough go of it lately. Sirius is still treading water in penny stock territory, trading at around $3 a share.

It seems Charter Communications has come into the shorts' crosshairs again with a 14% jump in shares short. It's another company that has been beaten down into penny stock land (shares trade for under $3 a stub), perhaps as traders smell blood from disappointing earnings reports. The most recent quarterly report did nothing to help its position; it added just a handful of video cable customers, even though its losses narrowed and it saw an 8% increase in revenues. It's a slow turnaround, to be sure, but is there hope?

Considering its cheap valuation, many CAPS players see Charter as a possible buyout candidate, though its high debt levels would seem to mitigate that. Moreover, Neil Smit, the cable company's CEO, said on its conference call last week that Charter would be the one looking to buy rivals rather than getting bought out itself. The state of the credit markets these days and Charter's highly leveraged position makes that seem a bit grandiose.

Management at Charter doesn't get any high marks from CAPS investor BigVincent in his top bull pitch, even though he sees the company slowly marching toward profitability.

CHTR [charter communications] a company that has been undermined by horrible management is slowly turning things around for the better. Ranked as the 4th largest company along a long list of competitors such as Cablevision (NYSE:CVC), Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC), and Comcast, can in fact make money off of the triple play package deal, or just selling customers cable TV alone. As companies such as Comcast become larger so do their cable rates and prices. This leaves room for Charter to sell packages at lower cost's to consumers, and even being able to sell undesired assets to other cable providers, allowing this company to become closer to cash flow positive from year to year. I'd say within 3 years you can see charter making a difference in the VOD [video on demand], cable industry, and making up for the majority of their losses that have been seen over the past few years.

With a market cap a little under 1.5 billion it allows a lot of room for investment growth and opportunities to share holders.

Speak up!
You've heard from the CAPS community; now it's your turn for a star turn -- tell the community what you have to say. Squeeze 'em till it hurts, or short 'em till the sun don't shine? May the best argument prevail!

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Fool contributor Rich Duprey does not have a financial position in any of the stocks mentioned in this article. You can see his holdings here. There's no shortcut around The Motley Fool's disclosure policy.