And the shorters have not gone away. Just checked Shortman.com,...

And the shorters have not gone away. Just checked Shortman.com, on Monday (last day traded before trading halt), this was the data:

	Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4	Column 5	Column 6
0	Date	Gross shorts 1	Issued capital	% Capital shorted 2	Trade volume 3	Shorts as % of volume
1	Mon 15th Jan, 2018	370,762	211,049,988	0.17%	1,875,159	19.77%

So nearly 20% of the volume traded were shorts.
When the data for today's trades comes up, it wouldn't surprise me to see it as high as 30% or more shorted as % of volume. Anyone who has been shorting will find this a perfect day - news about oversupply, the market not doing much, other lithium stocks down - so in they come, using their usual tactics to drive the prices as low as they can so they can panic others to sell.

There are some interesting articles on how shorters do this, including encouraging negative reporting of stories surrounding a stock, and using computerised trades to periodically flood the sell side, wiping out a lot of buyers and lowering the price. Shorters have been in ORE for a long time, they are still making money out of it on days like this.