Good News & Bad News, page-46845

I don't want to repeat everything we had already discussed in the Market Manipulation on the ASX thread a few days ago, just some points:

People with a "Shorters don't really matter (because their position size didn't move)"-attitude might think that it's enough to be a long holder to stabilize the share price. When everybody i holding, nobody is selling, right? Wrong!

In the absence of buyers (new longs or longs that increase their position), i.e. after nearly total destruction of sentiment, it is possible for shorters to sell to each other (or themselves via left pocket, richt pocket trades) in order to suppress the share price.

When they manage to make up a very high percentage of daily turnover, their buy/sell orders will match very good. Add the triggering of stop loss orders, margin calls, momentum traders and top notch FUD and the shorters are even able to cover while driving the SP down.


Also, there might be some projection at work:
Hardcore long holders think shorters are to blame, because the cannot imagine other longs to be so stupid, short-term oriented and narrow-minded to fall for the FUD going on.
And weak minded (ex-)long holders feel clever to go-with-the-flow with a "capital protection"-attitude looking at all the negative news and increasing short positions thinking "Well, I'm not gonna be the idiot here holding this stock last. I rather sell quickly and let the market do the rest. I'm not a backstabber, it's just a cruel world out there. And I always can come back when sentiment improves." They don't need to blame shorters because they know they jumped ship themselves.