I want to be careful what I write, emotions are high right now. Firstly, I agree with what gustaaf has written. There's a lot at stake and we need clarification.
My second concern is with the increase in shorting that is taking place. I just checked shortman.com, here are the last posted known numbers for GSW - pay special attention to the % shorted of the amount traded each day.
|
Column 1 |
Column 2 |
Column 3 |
Column 4 |
Column 5 |
Column 6 |
| 1 |
Date |
Gross shorts 1 |
Issued capital |
% Capital shorted 2 |
Trade volume 3 |
Shorts as % of volume |
| 2 |
Thu 18th Jan, 2018 |
215,285 |
100,013,171 |
0.21% |
416,119 |
51.74% |
| 3 |
Wed 17th Jan, 2018 |
329,758 |
100,013,171 |
0.33% |
634,150 |
52.00% |
| 4 |
Tue 16th Jan, 2018 |
215,659 |
100,013,171 |
0.21% |
430,792 |
50.06% |
| 5 |
Mon 15th Jan, 2018 |
194,229 |
100,013,171 |
0.19% |
336,112 |
57.79% |
I have invested in a lithium company (which I won't name) which has been heavily attacked by shorters for the past 2 or 3 years, and it has finally seemed to have broken the curse and is moving up, although shorters don't easily leave the party they have created. It got so bad at one point that the MD of the company did make a statement about the effect the shorting was having, depressing the share price.
Also take note of the dates - the last two, most negative articles in the AFR were published 19 January. The above numbers show that over 50% of the shorts as % of volume were shorted in the 4 days prior to the publication.
Because I had invested in the lithium company, I did as much reading as I could on shorting tactics, not that I'm an expert, but there are some interesting articles which you can google. One explained how shorters encourage negative reporting about a company. They love nothing more than to see places like this start to turn on each other with hundreds of posts creating doubt.
I hope that the company directors and management take this opportunity to put out the facts, whatever they are, about the contracts. Vagueness and evasion are only more food for the shorters.
