PuzzledMy understanding of the regulation pertaining to short...

Puzzled
My understanding of the regulation pertaining to short trades is that as soon as a contract is in place to borrow the shares they have until 7pm on the day to report.

The shares will show up in the T+4 gross aggregate shorts in T+4 days time.

These same shares may or may not be sold on market at any time until they are returned. Smoke and mirrors and what happens is not fully transparent while on loan.

The aggregate shorts are all shares loaned. It does not account for anteater may be bought back but not returned. I believe the fee is around 0.6% per year of value when loaned so the cost to borrow is small.

I'd welcome a comment by Tutor on the % and time frame.

For PLS last Wednesday and using Wednesdays closing price over $222 million worth of shares on aggregate were added to the shorts. These can be sold any time and sends a strong signal about the shorts continuing commitment.

Conversely when SYA was around 18c maybe 6 months ago 10 days average volume was returned on one day.

The shorts can signal by borrowing or returning and at the moment could be selling 10% of daily volume shorts and buying 50% of the daily volume but not returning until they want to signal a change in sentiment.

The only number that is fully transparent is the volume short sold daily if reported correctly. This is why I focus on this and the aggregate as a secondary indicator.

We tend to put all shorters in the one basket but I've noticed lots of small aggregate daily returns on certain stocks possibly indicating smaller players returning and while the bigger players continue to pile in.

Up again today on 68% of 65 day average volume.
54% of yesterday's volume shorted on low volume.
Yesterday's volume 36% of 10 day and 32% of 5 day trailing average volume. Seems like a general lack of supply atm in the short term.