Aster think you might be mistaken about "loading up again". As...

Aster think you might be mistaken about "loading up again". As you yourself have been frustrated at many times before, the reported Short Sales data is notoriously patchy & unreliable - relying on voluntary reporting of short sales under which participants often "forget" to lodge/declare short sales.

As a result I know we've both witnessed the reported short positions appear to jump around a lot - but is actually just a major short position holder forgetting to declare for a period of time, when redeclare it short position can appear to suddenly jump/increase.

Latest published short numbers you're relying on show reported short position jumping from 6.99% to 7.62% between 2nd to 3rd Sep (latest data available), which would require increased gross short sales of a minimum of 18,440,933. This is contradicted by the daily gross short sales for 2nd September showing only 2,965,267 gross short sales (i.e. 15,475,666 phantom extra gross short sales would have been required, & zero gross short covers).

I suspect as usual one or more of the larger short position holders has not been submitting his position for a while, and suddenly "remembered" to do so. The 7.6% matches up nicely with reported aggregate short positions between April-June in 7% range, so likely they just stopped submitting for a while.