The problem here is that Westpac management would not see this...

The problem here is that Westpac management would not see this coming at the time they planned the buyback. So, now they try to deal with it. In their long term view, this is a chance to cancel more shares than what they planned. And they give more time for the share price to improve. Obviously, by Feb, the share price may not be a lot better and the buyback will fail. In that case, they already said they would buy on the market. And the share price will go up. It could mean that the long-suffering retail investors will have to wait a very long time to get to the break-even point. The ones who can afford to average down by getting more under $21 will probably get there quicker.

The shorts keep playing with the banks! Every time WBC and other banks get positive, they wait until 5 minutes after hours and dump the shares to bring the prices down. This is frustrating but they cannot keep doing this. Give it another couple of weeks and they will run out of firepower. The worse it looks now, the better and more violent it will be when it rallies up. The shorts will be caught out when it happens. This is a boxing bout that goes to the 12th round! The shorts and the longs are probably only up to round 8-9. I feel that the fight has already started to tilt in favour of the longs. Basically, the ones buying on margin loans lost money. The others lost time. The ones who buy more get profit. The ones who jumped in after the selloff make a profit. Some of the shorts make money. Some of them get burnt later. The bank just keeps making money and paying dividends as they always do We n eed to be pateint.