Hi All. There is a misunderstanding on how to lock up shares so I thought I’d put on my professional hat and respond.
Setting a limit price too far out of the money doesn’t actually do anything. The larger the spread, the less risk there is for the MM to borrow the shares. They constantly monitor the share price. In the case of TPTW in the 5-7c range, anything over a 50c limit would likely be ignored. If the price were to rise sharply, they would have plenty of time and room to exit their short position.
The better way to do it, if your broker allows, is that you can designate to your broker to prohibit loaning of your shares. This is actually how many firms make their money so not all will allow the designation. Some, even return a percentage of the loan to the holders as “interest” to encourage you to do so.
If you really want to “bust” a short (and I’m not even sure how you short an OTC stock, I’ve never managed an account that allowed it) the key is just to buy more in the open market. I was personally surprised volume was so low the day after the CEO investor call, which I thought was great. If the 50-60 people (beeps) I counted on the call all went out and bought more shares, the price would have gone higher this week. That is the only way to get it to move higher. Attract new buyers or have existing buyers buy more shares. It would have helped if the call included an update to revenues from the medical and telecom divisions, but as someone who was formerly listed, I can understand limiting forward looking comments.
