Fraud fighter, I think it's unlikely that shorts know more about trial results than we do. Sometimes shorts get trial information a few days ahead of the public, but not typically.
Short positions in biotech have two components: (1) there is big money on Wall Street that plays a short strategy across a wide range of biotech names, not based on the individual situations of each of those biotechs, under the belief that more will fail than succeed. That's a darn good bet. These short strategies are very sophisticated with hedging long and short to squeeze profit out of the these stocks as they fluctuate. But, the net bet is: we win if we short a basket of biotechs. ADXS is in that basket. (2) individual biotechs are shorted more than others for all sorts of reasons, but mostly when there's a general belief the science is either not likely to succeed or when there's a lot of competition with similar approaches or for the same indications. ADXS is "left field" science. NO ONE else, but Aduro, is using listeria and its mechanism of action. I'm not enough of a bioscience guy to give you an elevator speech explanation for why/ how ADXS science is doubted by the mainstream, but it is.
So, don't think ADXS is unusual in the short action against it. Shorts don't know more about trial results, but they know WAY MORE about trading and risk arbitrage and they know that biotech, as an investing segment, will have more companies consume capital (i.e., not payoff) than companies that will be big winners.
