gassed,The number duggie quoted (704k) is a daily "Gross" short...

gassed,

The number duggie quoted (704k) is a daily "Gross" short number - i.e. the number of shorts opened on that particular day.
A couple of things to note for context....
1) As you have already noted, there were zero shorts opened on 26/9 - now, whether they were not reported until 27/9 or not, the average over the 2 days is 352k - pretty much in line with the few days reported prior.
2) You've also no doubt seen the trend of the Net shorts (below) and how that has been trending significantly down over the last 12 months.

We are now sitting at 0.93% short interest (as of 24/9) and the trend confirms that it doesn't matter how many gross shorts are open on any given day - as the Shorters have been closing that many (if not more than that) each day for the downward trend to be realised. On 23/9 there were 355k new short positions opened....but the Net short position actually dropped by about 100k from 15.5M the day before to 15.4M. On 24/9 there were another 360k new short positions opened....but the Net short position remained the same as the day before at 15.4M. We will see how many Net shorts there were on 27/9 when the Shortman figures are updated in 3 days.
3) In short, "those pesky shorts" have been leaving in droves and we have less than a quarter the number that we had around this time last year - and, even that was down significantly from the peak of 10.75% back in August 2022. The new short positions that are being opened each day are being used as ammunition to pull the share price down with small trades to allow the Shorters to exit in an orderly fashion without driving the price up substantially. The usual games being played.