Yeah so there were 15m shares shorted gross. And a 5m fall in...

Yeah so there were 15m shares shorted gross. And a 5m fall in net shorts. This means 15m of new shorts were opened and 20m of existing shorts were closed. That means 67% of Friday's volume was closing shorts.

My assertion would be that the 14m share block trade after market on Friday was Merryl Lynch opening a huge short position and another broker(s) closing a bunch of their own by taking on all those shares.