Phrantic,
If you were so inclined (and had WAY too much time), you could look up my posts on this from around Sept 2008 on Yahoo. At that time, I though Doug Furth and Alaninvestor were full of $#%@ about there being a large short position. I've never made a dime from playing stocks on that basis (even when large short positions exist).
But how on earth can anybody make sense of the 4/16 figure of O/S=722mm? RM had at least 400mm of those, so there were only 322mm at most available to be owned. And of those, 55mm were buyback shares and 145mm were the affiliate transfer shares, so there were maybe only 100mm to be owned by the rest of us! The stock had recently been selling sub-penny -- at $0.01 someone could have bought ALL 322mm shares for $3.2mm. On top of this, I know a lot of people with large positions. And I can't imagine SM and other insiders weren't buying when it was cheap.
I really cannot believe that there AREN'T a ton of shares shorted in this.
I owned a company (I cannot give the ticker or my post will be deemed off-topic). That company had a small short position and I was surprised it hadn't been shorted more (it eventually went BK and the writing was on the wall). Well, one day the new (legal) short numbers came up and the increase over the 2 weeks since the prior report equalled the ENTIRE VOLUME of the stock over the prior 2 months. Logically, this could not have happened. So, I contacted management and they indicated that it was likely there had been a large (legal) short position that had not been declared due to a hedge fund exemption -- and for some reason they decided to make it public all at once.
Phrantic, I don't know. I am no expert on this -- in part because I think waiting for a MOASS is generally a bad investment idea. I know some savvy people to think there is no short position. But none of them can explain how all of the ownership fit within 722mm O/S on 4/16.
Wadi
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