InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[Fog1937]

Your 'left' pocket sell to your 'right' pocket; now your 'left' is short and your 'right' is long. To keep 'Market Oversight' off your back, your 'right' pocket may be another entity next office or a phone call away. All needed is to repeat similar sales at progressively lower prices. Within the same trading day no shares are required or change hands (not until settlement day), nor a worry about an Up-tick rule. Sales can flow from 'left' to right' or also from 'right' to left'.
At the end of the trading day there may be an imbalance with (for example) the 'left' short and the 'right' with an equal amount long. Now with a 'close to close' trade 'right' sells its long shares to 'left' (to cover his shorts) and both end the trading day 'flat' (no settlement needed). One side may have a loss for the day equal to the gain of the other; so next day the same is done in reverse order and they are in balance again.
What makes this all possible is the absence of the 'Up-tick' rule and the Market Maker exemption of Short-Selling for 'market liquidity'.
Hope you can follow it.