Players Network Inc. (fka PNTV)

[Toxic Avenger]

Reg Sho is not true short interest. It's the short positions created by MMs selling stock before they buy, to assure there is a profit. It's a huge percentage of the trades on EVERY stock from AAPL to PNTV.
With a stinky pinkie like PNTV, it's often close to half the volume for the day, as no MM wants to risk being long a hyped equity.

It does not result in any short pressure, because it's covered immediately, often from death spiral convert holders who are guaranteed to make a profit on the trade, since they buy their shares directly from the company at a large discount. Those shares are not reported as a trade, since they are not purchased on the open market.

It would be very interesting to have the convert trades reported with the other order flow though - you'd likely get to see a trade at $.02 followed by a trade at $.008 for the same number of shares. But that would probably discourage investors from buying at $.02 and the MMs wouldn't be happy about that.

The numbers quoted by P2O are in fact the actual short data, the semi-monthly report of true short positions. Retail can't short PNTV, so that represents the small short positions left over when MMs sold first, but couldn't cover by the reporting date.