NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[GermanCol]

I think your confusion may come from mixing up short sale volume with short interest. Below you will find an explanation of the difference and why they can be normally confusing:


https://www.tradersmagazine.com/departments/equities/understanding-short-sale-activity/

https://www.finra.org/investors/insights/short-interest#:~:text=The%20short%20interest%20data%20is,sales%20on%20individual%20trade%20dates.


Since this data also comes from FINRA, what gives? The daily short selling volume is misleading because market makers and principal trading firms report a large number of trades as short sales in positions that they quickly cover. For market makers with a customer order to sell, they will temporarily sell short (which gets published to the tape as a media transaction for public dissemination) and then immediately buy from their customer in a non-media transaction that is not publicly disseminated to avoid double counting share volumes. SEC guidance also mandates that almost all principal trading firms that provide liquidity at multiple price levels, or arbitrage international securities, must mark orders they enter as short, even though those firms might also have strategies that tend to flatten by end of day. Since the trade reporting process for market makers and principal trades makes the Daily Short Volume easily misleading, we do not display it on www.otcmarkets.com.


What Short Interest Is Not
In addition to short interest data, FINRA also publishes Short Sale Volume Data. The Daily Short Sale Volume data provides aggregated volume by security for all off-exchange short sale trades. This data excludes any trading activity that is not publicly disseminated and is not consolidated with exchange data.

Some market participants mistakenly conclude that the bi-monthly short interest data is understated because the Short Sale Volume Daily File reflects volume that is much larger than the positions reported as short interest. However, short interest position data does not—and is not intended to—equate to the daily short sale volume data posted on FINRA’s website.

The short interest data is just a snapshot that reflects short positions held by brokerage firms at a specific moment in time on two discrete days each month. The Short Sale Volume Daily File reflects the aggregate volume of trades within certain parameters executed as short sales on individual trade dates. Therefore, while the two data sets are related in that short sale volume activity may ultimately result in a reportable short interest position, they are not the same.

Investors may establish short positions in a security that continue to exist for varying lengths of time, which can result in a short position being represented in one of the data sets but not the other. For example, an investor may sell a security short and purchase shares to close the position on the same trade date. That position would not appear in the short interest data, though the short sale transaction would appear on the Short Sale Volume Daily File.

On the other hand, an investor may hold a short position open for days or weeks, perhaps as a hedge against another position. While the short sale transaction that established that short position would appear in the Short Sale Volume Daily File only on the date the short sale transaction occurred, the short position would continue to be reflected in the short interest data for as long as the position remained open.