Sterling, the biggest issue is the misrepresentation of the short volume data published by FINRA. It is not 'short volume' as you think and, many here are trying to make it be that to prove a point (not implying you).
I had posted what it meant on another board but those were removed. I did have a very long conversation with FINRA about this report and they made it very clear how this data can be misinterpreted.
First - seperate out completely the short volume trade report from evrything else. It is not what you think it is.
The way a trade is executed, Investor A is long 100,000 shares of XYZ and wants to sell at a limit. They place the order thru their broker to sell who then routs that order to a market maker who has no inventory in the stock. Over the course of the day, the market maker sells all or part of that order under multiple trades (lets say 10 trades of 10,000 ea. for talking purposes). Because the market maker does not want the liability of the shares he can't unload the market maker is allowed to sell first into a buyer into the 'media market' and then come back right afterwards and buy the same mount from you. The first leg of the trade, the MM selling to the buyer is the sale that is reported and because the market maker did not have custody of the shares he MUST mark it a short sale and will not report the mirror trade of him buying the shares from the originating seller. Even though the net result was a long seller selling out a position they held it is reported in this system as short volume. In my scenario it would happen 10 times for 100,000 shares.
A senior FINRA person explained this in great detail and explained that only one leg of a trade is reported to minimize duplication of trade volume.
To understand short voilume vs. short position you have to use the bi-Monthly short interest reports. You will only get 2-days of snapshot of what a real short in the stock is because the rest of the data does not have the resolution to differentiate.
Regarding FTD's, they are what is reported daily by the CNS system. It is not cumulative, it isaggregate. If you see 50% short volume every day for a month but you see no change in short interest and no change in FTD's, chances are that volume you are thinking is short sales is really just longs executing through market makers or other bona-fide market making that covered.
For the Record: I know nothing of this company at all so will not speak to the realities of shorts here. I am here to only clear up this confusion caused by some irresponsible people who are misleading what this means.
