The last short cover phase was Late Sept (6m shorts) to early Dec (1.2m shorts) for a SP move of $9 to $6.5 ... so the shorts look like they accumulated 4.8m by roughly $1.25 ... $6m less their costs of loan shares.
And they are up again in this phase but yet to cover ... so well ahead again.
I'm not sure the ASX200 aspect is behind this. Recent analysis elsewhere generally points to accumulation/profits being behind the short activity - probably no different here.
A successful shorts programme (like that we're seeing) would make sense for an accumulator as it would keep the SP/MCap down and in the event of needing more funding for trials ... allow the ensuing CR to happen at lower SP while giving the shorter a leg up head start for the finance offer. That they can both profit from and cover with.
I expect the shorts will keep shorting until something FA pops up positive enough to have the wider general investment market flow to push the brokers/institutions to release the bots and accumulate ... either via an uptrend or trough pattern.
It's quite fascinating.
CU6 Price at posting:
$3.94 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
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