Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[Steady_T]

Could be. Overall I don't think there is that coordinated a plan. But then stranger things have happened.

Shorts don't have to collude to have a common goal. They have a common interest. Obviously there is a lot of money at work with a 20,000,000 share short position.
They also must have a plan in case there is a sudden drop of very positive news. We saw in the case of Game Stop that literally several hundred million Dollars was employed to defend the short position before it was overwhelmed.

The market is full of opportunists. That is not a bad thing, it just is. If there are some whales out there the think that Anavex has a good chance of success and the attendant share price rise they might well be watching to see what the shorts do and seize the opportunity if it presents itself.

In general the whales will accept smaller profits for less risk.

As far as the MM's go my sense is most of them that make a market in AVXL are just making market and don't have a big agenda. There are companies that are also MMs that are willing to manipulate. If you keep up with the SEC fines you will see there are clear rule violators that are willing to do illegal things in pursuit of profit.

I did a spreadsheet some time ago that was a swag at how much money the shorts have made while building this short position. I figured it was about $250,000,000. Obviously I had to make many assumptions since hard information is not available. Even so, that provides a clue about how much money is involved.