Chart, page-17028

Thanks for trying to explain it, but to me:
"re-opening shorts will counter act your losses as shorts start making profits"
is no different to simply selling down your long position. Same effect on price pressure, same effect on your net position and therefore same effect on your net profit.

How is this in any way different to keeping your long position and re-opening shorts, as you describe? Sure, you retain the long shares (by not selling them but opening shorts instead), but to move to a net or greater long position subsequent to this, you'd still need to cover your shorts - which is no different to just buying more shares to add to your long position anyway.

Yes, hard to describe...
Perhaps this is clearer:

e.g.
hold 1m long
hold 1m short

price drops
no net effect

price rises
close 500k shorts (buy on market)
now have 500k net long "making money"

price continues to rise but then starts to reverse
re-open 500k shorts (sell on market)
no net effect from further drop
have "made money" from having 500k net long exposure during price rise.

....how is this different to:

Hold nothing
price rises
buy 500k shares on market
now have 500k net long "making money"

price continues to rise but then starts to reverse
sell 500k shares on market
have made money from holding 500k long during price rise.

???
The buying and selling on market is identical. The net exposure is identical. The "money made" is identical.

I realise that not everything is immediately logical, but to to me there is no fundamental difference in these two strategies, besides the second one not tying up any capital until you "think" the price will rise, as well as the second one not involving any borrow fees.
Why would you choose the first, unless you wanted to try to influence the market by creating a visible short figure..? Is it worth the cost?

"Dumping your position will just help smash the SP"
If the price starts to drop and you wanted to "dump" your long position, how is this any different to opening a bunch of shorts to hedge your long position..? Surely selling shorts just has the very same effect on the sp as "dumping" the same amount of long shares..?

The "time" you emphasise that is required to build large positions is beside the point, as it is clearly the NET position that matters to profit/loss making, and therefore you need to buy or sell whatever volume you want to be NET at any stage anyway. Unless you are covering/buying/selling off-market perhaps..?