I agree with you in that it wouldn't be possible for the shorts...

I agree with you in that it wouldn't be possible for the shorts to cover (~16 million) on market, without pushing the SP up considerably and losing their paper profits. To me, the current pattern seems to be to manage the SP to keep it low, until the re-balance, when they can do an off-market deal to "return the shares". Frankly though, I've been suprised that the shorters have pushed the SP down as far as its gone, as they must have sold a significant number of shares to do so at what must be a potentially very marginal profit margin. But the sell side has looked very lean for months now, except for a couple of blocks that move around or sit at the queue top. I think most buyers are probably buying shorter's shares without perhaps realising this, there are very few genuine sellers at these low prices. I'm thinking this is likely the best time to buy, before the shorters disappear and the fireworks begin, so I've been topping up whenever funds become available to me. I guess there's still a possibility that WBT might release news of a big name signing before the ASX rebalance, putting upward pressure on the SP and perhaps starting the mother of all short squeezes due to ~16 million uncovered. That would be my preferred outcome.

All IMHO, DYOR