I certainly don't know, but I believe that with the recent weakness in the price the shorts are working their way out of their short positions.
As long as the substantial bashing continues I think it's clear that a substantial naked short position still exists, and if as suggested it was ever near 2 billion shares it cannot be eliminated very quickly, but nonetheless I suspect that they're working their way out of it. If most the bashers go away, I think we can assume the position has largely been cleared.
If we gain UK approval, and bashing continues, while I don't believe it can be very effective, they'll be struggling to clear their short positions at what clearly will be much higher stock prices. Griffith and others are not fools, but if Posner is capable of determining that they're closing a major naked short position it should strengthen her position in the spoofing trial. It should also work to get the SEC looking at the actions of the MM's.
Over short periods it's completely legal for MM's to have naked short positions as they're supposed to balance demand and supply and may do so under the guise of maintaining this balance. To my knowledge they're supposed to work their way out of such positions, but there seems to be no consequences for them not doing so. Many years ago a company I was invested in went on a Russell index. After hours the day they went on the exchange millions of shares traded as Institution who had to have shares of companies on that Russell index loaded up with shares at the market closing price. Simultaneously a multi-million short position was established, that's legal, but I really don't believe what happened thereafter was, that short position never was significantly diminished, it remained for a couple years when the company came off the Russell, then it disappeared. I don't know if one, or many MM's had maintained that short position for years, but clearly it was a naked short and effectively they'd created hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock that they company didn't see a penny from. I cannot say how much better the company may have done had this not occurred, but it clearly was happening and the SEC or others never took an interest.
Let's hope that Posner is able to put this all together and in time the SEC takes an interest, but not until after she settles the case for NWBO as the last thing I'd want is the SEC delaying Posner's actions.
Gary
