There's a couple of way shorts can be utilised @muzdaz and it's...

There's a couple of way shorts can be utilised @muzdaz and it's not always directly related to the share it's taken out against. Timing of when the short was taken out plays equally an important role. If you took it out at a high price had an equal dollar position of the same stock going long, you essentially cap any profits from the short price if it continues to move up or down. If it declines further, your short will be in profit and if you can time the exit well, when you close it off (hopefully close to the expected low), anytime it moves higher than this point you will receive as profits that would otherwise be lost. The only cost to do this is the commission/finance of whatever the is required to maintain the short and long. You may only want to close the position until you see clear evidence the macro economics is changing - something yet to clearly happen, but not far off. If you went short entirely, you are certainly subject to a short squeeze and take on a lot of risk, most likely eyeing the current fundamentals/earnings in hope of being poor or missing the target, which we will see for a lot of retailers and is natural when you consider the conditions the business is actually under right now. If however it outperforms, you should see it start to close off or reduce and as we just saw with MP1, there can be a massive boost to share price. Given the liquidity of TPW isn't all to high, we could see it get really volatile if that happens. The number of shorts is not really increasing, unlike sector competitors like BBN, which is close to a 3 year high in total shorts. This is an fair indication of expected performance come earnings. So all in all it really depends on how the trade is managed and the strategy associated with it. It's quite fair to take a short position and quick trade when you can see retailers are meant to suffer under high interest rates or if you're aiming to capitalise on things like inflation reports and interest rate hikes yet to come and be factored into price and company reports.