You do understand that if anyone is using a discount broker they only have one route.
If you use a broker that allows you to choose your route you get your order executed much faster - just as it allows you to exit much faster if the stock is crashing.
I love all of the conspiracy theories about mean ole MMs.
Everyone has to understand that the MMs provide liquidity to a non-liquid OTC.
All market maker sells to buyers for which the MM doesn't at that moment possess the stock would go onto the list. The shorts data is sent to SEC at time of execution, so during the course of a day, a MM may trade 20M shares of company xyz, of which 10M of those shares were initiated as short sales and the other 10M were buys to cover those shorts. Despite the fact that their net position at the end of the day is flat, the data would show 10M shares as having been short sales.
This applies even to grey sheet/expert market stocks. Despite the fact there is no MM making bids and asks, MM's can and do call around to other MM's to find willing sellers to match buy orders and vice-versa.
The other factor that could affect the daily short figure is very interesting. If a sale is being initiated by the holder of restricted 144 stock, even though the owner of those shares is technically a long, the sale is listed as a short sale because the actual certificates are not yet "clean" via the transfer agent.
As part of making a market, they may have periodic short positions throughout a trading day if they fill buy orders for more shares than they have in inventory, but they also often have inventory when they fill sell orders. Having an inventory does not mean that they are going "long" any more than having a temporary net short position is "shorting." This kind of temporary short position is legal and necessary for efficient trading.
If you want to find something illegal look at the ENZC press release about SAGA acquiring 2 empty subsidiaries for $250M - now that is illegal.
IG
"The Hour Between Dog and Wolf"
