it’s certainly surprising that so many shorts are being taken...

it’s certainly surprising that so many shorts are being taken out at 52 week lows, the technicals don’t justify it and they represent a huge open risk if lithium recovers or if AJM just catches up to peer valuation.

Large short interest at recent lows suggests concealment of accumulation/attempts to artificially reduce SP and/or shake out stop losses. The other explanations such as bad news re the plant, their financials or sector need consideration but seem less likely, with truly material bad news legally declarable ASAP, the threshold for the company to meet its duty of disclosure is very low given the plethora of positive information around the SPP, the declaration of commercial operations and the positive guidance from the last quarterly - and any significant departure from that narrative.

The huge show of support by management putting money in also implies things are overdone or even that the BoD are in some way engineering this situation.

Taking off my tinfoil hat, it might just be that the recent capital raise was effectively achieved at an SP of 11ish cents (13 cent issue price plus half of a 3 cent option per share for free). Hence JRO selling at the same level and a counterparty buying - however even that would be encouraging given the lack of support for the raising prior to the SPP