You said "If they've been shorting all the way up, doesn't it make sense to short along with them?"
Depends if you have as much awareness of the underlayment as they do. ( they = program architects) Do you?
Accumulating short interst has for many positions a goal of seeking inertia. All systems have goals. Risk arbitrage has changed how goals are structured. The intent of many short programs is inertia, because the available supply of stock against a strong fundamental backdrop ensures only one thing, a few or even one program architecht will know when to fish and when to cut bait. No TA reads Intent accept Volume, yet the publics best attempt to read volume is lumped into useless metrics like OBV and sentiment, neither of which gets to the truth of the underlayment, and both of which masquerade intent.
As traders your looking to ride a trend, a trend is not a guarantee, especially when the underlayment is structured according to rules and with forethought about which you may know little or nothing at all. This is the most difficult market period, because all money is seeking forward demand whether it admits it through its instruments or not. Rotation under these terms is stealth and guile.
its very difficult to pigeon hole intent, you must get to the underlayment and recognize how each component functions to serve the program at varyng stages. Stalk the systems, because they are stalking you. ( assuming you are not an instrument of one or another)
AI
