Just because it's legal and we have to live with it does not make it a necessary part of the market, as you like to proclaim.
The basis of your claims about shorters seems to be that
genuine investors cannot recognise a bubble or an overvalued stock, but short sellers can
and are therefore somehow "necessary" to cool prices down, which is nonsense.
And in another breath you claim they essentially have no effect on price - how is that possible when they directly increase supply and thereby have a direct impact on pricing as per market economics 101? Don't pretend that the current price is based on some nice pretty evaluation of the company's fundamentals - it is the result of various factors, including SENTIMENT to a large degree, which is most certainly impacted by the excessive downward pressure applied by tactical shorting, selling/trading and FUD campaigns. And yes, of course the market conditions contribute substantially; no-one is denying that.
BTW the short numbers that you are referring to, and that most refer to in most discussions about short numbers, are the headline "total short positions" reported by ASIC, that do not accurately represent the true number of shares actually sold short, since afaik they include onward lending volumes and also are at the mercy of sloppy reporting overseen by a toothless watchdog. What is REALLY going on with the actual short selling? We will never know; just how they want it to be. In fact, they could "onward lend" (multiple times even?) purely to plump the figures if they so desired, without ever actually selling the shares short at all. How convenient a system for them. More illusions by the puppet masters. It's principally a tool to milk others of their cash imo by leaching off and exaggerating/accelerating a downturn in pricing. Those "proud" of it are disgraceful imo.
