It does get tricky from here. You have to remember that the...

It does get tricky from here. You have to remember that the lowest was 20.38 recently. And there was a lot of short selling at that time to bring it down to that level. So, the shorts have to average their selling prices. Currently, they do have a profit. There are many of them and the ones who started from selling at 26 => 21 have got a lot of "unrealised" profit that they would not dare to "realise" quickly as they would simply pump the share price up. They will trickle buy to realise their profit. The ones who started selling around 21 => 20.38 are now on the tiger's back knowing they can be burnt easily if WBC rises over 21 in the next couple of weeks. The shorting game is not that simple when they want to get out and keep the profit.

It's the experience for all stocks that when the price is depressed to an extreme level, the big players will swoop in and it will set a bottom and jump sharply denying the late short-sellers a chance to get out quickly. So, they will lose a lot of money and the profit of the earlier short sellers will be trimmed. They will exit with a conditional order to keep some of their profit and you will see a sharp jump in share price that will stay and will not come back down again (until many months later).

At this level of dividend payment, being one of the 4 big banks, returning 3.5 billion dollars to shareholders, being attacked by short sellers for a whole month and being profitable, it is probably silly to suggest it is now a falling knife! It would be advisable to the shorts that if they enter the fray now, they will fall on their own swords. This is why I am selling more puts to lock in more at further discounts from the current price. I am locking in a series of prices around 19, 19.5, 20 and 20.5 with further discounts.