JS on Smart Investor (video interview), page-42

With the greatest respect, I think you are mis-characterising what went on here.

The spike in shorts was extraordinary, way above day to day short levels. And the spikes occurred one or a few days before each ASX article. There were zero other occasions with dramatic spikes in short positions.

You said: "If someone takes a short position because they’ve uncovered info relating to the company that they think will be damaging, there’s nothing wrong with that" - is not sufficient. There are two possibilities where this could be illegal:

(1) If that someone has information that is not available to anyone else in the market, it is insider information and it is illegal to act upon it.

(2) If that someone uses that information to conduct a sensational media campaign with the sole purpose of scaremongering and driving down the share price, that is market manipulation and is not legal.

I think there are strong grounds to consider the possibility of (1) or (2) or both. I make no claim as to who was involved.

What occurred was completely different to someone taking out a few short positions on a day to day basis. It was clearly co-ordinated with the release of AFR articles and occurred before they were printed, which infers some pre-knowledge of events that was not available to the market.