Pessimists could be nervous

The strong run in genomics stocks is, not surprisingly, bringing out the short sellers.

Looking at the data, short interest began to ramp up last June for nine of the 10 public companies that could be loosely defined as genomics plays. The motivation for shorting is obvious, as all 10 stocks posted triple-digit percentage gains through last Jan. 14, the latest available date for short interest data, and all 10 have continued to climb since then, too. During this period, only Lynx (LYNX) has seen its short interest fall (see below)...