Yes the influence of shorting as being the major contributor to...

Yes the influence of shorting as being the major contributor to down trending stocks when IMO they are actually just experiencing normal profit taking taking against the backdrop of risk off global markets is grossly overstated across most retail dominated stock threads

While the shorts on PLS are increasing it is not even in the top 100 most shorted stocks.

the top shorted stock is MYR at 16% of total shares on issue -number 100 is GWA at around 3% PLS is less than 1 %

I suspect PLS is being Algo played for VWAP which can be for a variety of reasons but I cant see shorting is the reason why its retraced back down towards the long term moving average shorting is a symptom and not the cause. if people think a stock is likely to fall on profit taking they may take a punt accordingly -

Personally i would be happy to shorting banned - I think the argument for liquidity and price discovery is fundamentally flawed.