ASM is down because it's being shorted aggressively since it's Nov 22 highs, where the position was 10 million, or 7% of book.
This was the ATH, and the short position was at its largest.
This position has been bought back to 1.2 million currently, or 0.67% of book.
I understand the theory of trading in the market direction, but it doesn't apply here.
If you apply the short position chart to the company price chart, you will see that the short position is added to as price has attempted to rise on previous market sensitive announcements. This can be seen as manipulation, but it's just traders taking advantage of weak news releases, and suppressing the price.
If you look at the live price action on Iguana2 from Spark, you'll sell large selling walls capping price movement and suppressing the price to fuel the short around the news releases. People who bought the news are weaker in numbers, and are bullied out of the market, along with existing holders who doubt the company after the negative reaction to the news release.
The only answer to this is more buyers, which ironically is spurred on by the short positions being covered, which is what is being demonstrated in the reduction in the overall short position.
(20min delay)