Amarin Corp Plc (AMRN)

[FlyFishingStocks]

Naked shorting of AMRN…

We all agree (I think) that in order for this stock to rally (before and after interim), shorts must stop their attacks. Their raids in the past are obvious on the daily chart. However, lately, their attempts have been less successful and I believe their efforts will continue to dry up moving forward and allow the pps to rise with greater ease and magnitude.
When naked shorting is used and abused on a stock like AMRN serious technical damage results, as we’ve all witnessed the past few years.
Perhaps they’re operations are coming to an end?

Background:

Naked Short — This is an invention of the securities industry that is a license to create counterfeit shares. In the context of this document, a share created that has the effect of increasing the number of shares that are in the market place beyond the number issued by the company, is considered counterfeit. This is not a legal conclusion, since some shares we consider counterfeit are legal based upon today's rules. The alleged justification for naked shorting is to insure an orderly and smooth market, but all too often it is used to create a virtually unlimited supply of counterfeit shares, which leads to widespread stock manipulation – the lynchpin of this massive fraud.

Fails–to–Deliver — The process of creating shares via naked shorting creates an obvious imbalance in the market as the sell side is artificially increased with naked short shares or more accurately, counterfeit shares. Time limits are imposed that dictate how long the sold share can be naked. For a stock market investor or trader, that time limit is three days. According to SEC rules, if the broker dealer has not located a share to borrow, they are supposed to take cash in the short account and purchase a share in the open market. This is called a “buy–in,” and it is supposed to maintain the total number of shares in the market place equal to the number of shares the company has issued.

This naked short “time limit” shows up in broad daylight on the chart:


Here’s how they operate:

The Anatomy of a Short Attack —
Abusive shorting are not random acts of a renegade hedge funds, but rather a coordinated business plan that is carried out by a collusive consortium of hedge funds and prime brokers, with help from their friends at the DTC and major clearinghouses. Potential target companies are identified, analyzed and prioritized. The attack is planned to its most minute detail.
The plan consists of taking a large short position, then crushing the stock price, and, if possible, putting the company into bankruptcy. Bankrupting the company is a short homerun because they never have to buy real shares to cover and they don't pay taxes on the ill-gotten gain.
When it is time to drive the stock price down, a blitzkrieg is unleashed against the company by a cabal of short hedge funds and prime brokers. The playbook is very similar from attack to attack, and the participating prime brokers and lead shorts are fairly consistent as well.
Typical tactics include the following:
1. Flooding the offer side of the board — Ultimately the price of a stock is found at the balance point where supply (offer) and demand (bid) for the shares find equilibrium. This equation happens every day for every stock traded. On days when more people want to buy than want to sell, the price goes up, and, conversely, when shares offered for sale exceed the demand, the price goes down.
The shorts manipulate the laws of supply and demand by flooding the offer side with counterfeit shares. They will do what has been called a short down ladder. It works as follows: Short A will sell a counterfeit share at $10. Short B will purchase that counterfeit share covering a previously open position. Short B will then offer a short (counterfeit) share at $9. Short A will hit that offer, or short B will come down and hit Short A's $9 bid. Short A buys the share for $9, covering his open $10 short and booking a $1 profit.

Anyone long AMRN has been victimized by this activity. Whether it's buying more shares based on news events, only to witness a small uptick get raided to new lows, or being stopped out on a washout of previous lows. Even during this past week we saw the stock beginning to breakout before rally attempt was suddenly smothered by shorted counterfeit shares.
Hopefully these operations will continue to disappear as we approach interim so that the stock can finally rise with greater ease and magnitude. FFS