Further to my post yesterday regarding shorts, both ASX & ASIC...

Further to my post yesterday regarding shorts, both ASX & ASIC have now provided updated shorting figures (ASX for new shorts, ASIC for total shorts outstanding.

Firstly to last Friday's (24 Jun) new shorts. ASX reports 14.25m shorts - that's out of total LKE turnover for the day (ASX + ChiX) of 131.9m shares. That represents a relatively "quiet" 9.8% shorting (ie selling). We won't know the overall shorting outcome for the day until ASIC reports on Thursday.

Secondly to ASIC's report of outstanding shorts as at 21 Jun. The total shorts declined very marginally from 98.56m (on 20 Jun) to 98.25m. Given there were 13.97m new shorts on the day, that implies short covering (buying) of just slightly more at 14.29m - so a fairly neutral day from the shorters. While they did "help" the share price down with their 13.97m new shorts (sells), that does mean there was an awful lot of other concerted selling going on to collapse the share price (ie about 75m shares worth of selling).

The next 3 days of ASIC reports of outstanding shorts for 22/23/24 June which were huge volume days, will be instructive in terms of short covering that may or may not be underway.

As a final comment, I note it certainly is a relatively lower volume day today, looking like perhaps finishing between 70m & 80m shares. That compares with 140m/140m/132m for last Wed/Thu/Fri. (All turnover is ASX + ChiX, the latter with unusually substantial volumes.)