JS on Smart Investor (video interview), page-80

Your comprehension is off. His statement about retailers and insiders is in reference to: the stock is only held by retailers and the company insiders (ie not institutional investors) and that is why it couldn’t be shorted in any major way. He’s restating what the analysts told him last year.

He also says that at those peak times of short activity, o.003% (1 third of one percent) of the register was shorted, and that the 100th most shorted company on asx has 3% of the register shorted. Ie there was hardly any shorting relative to actual shorted stock on the asx.

Watch it again.