I believe the 8m shares you have got from Markit is the total outstanding loan balance (the total amount of borrow that has been drawn down from PBs). But this does not mean that it has all been shorted. Normally funds just source borrow and short the stock, but because the borrow is hard to get funds are drawing it down (paid to hold) even if they don't intend on shorting it straight away.
My understanding (and this is from a very high quality source) is that the ASIC data is a pretty good representation of the short interest of shorts that have occurred on-market from borrowed stock (short reporting is a legal requirement of the executing broker).
The other way people short hard to borrow stock is via synthetic shorts where the banks allows funds to short stock against their long swap inventory (basically they have an investor long on swap and allow a fund to use that stock to go short). This does not need to be separately disclosed via short reporting.
So, bottom line:
- it is likely the actual short interest is above 3.4m (current ASIC data), with the additional amount due to the synthetic shorts. It is probably below the 8m (but this is unknowable)
- there is likely 5m shares of borrow that has been drawn down, but not yet shorted (which is likely a headwind for any rally)
1PG Price at posting:
96.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Not Held
