Avid Bioservices Inc (CDMO)

[ImaPseudonym]

However, to my surprise, Pedro was correct, the latest short attacks have been done for a big part DUMPING long shares, possibly bought at the bottom and shellfed by one or related parties otherwise they would never have come on the dump at the same days and started at same times in those days.

I know you understand the market much better than I do (probably than I ever will) so please take this as a question.

Here is the data from your FINRA link for the key period of the recent bear raid in the second half of february. I have added a calculation of short percentage (the short sales divided by the total) and also the prices at the open and close.

Date : Short : Short Exmpt : Total Vol : %Short : Open-Close

 
 2/19/13	1242496	130776	3611481	34.4	1.89 - 1.77 
 2/20/13	433773	42755	1913262	22.67	1.74-1.66 
 2/21/13	897716	300	2525248	35.55	1.66-1.59 
 2/22/13	377231	900	1135813	33.21	1.16-1.58 
 2/25/13	777753	105896	2767171	28.11	1.58-1.39 
 2/26/13	870579	173408	3431003	25.37	1.37-1.21

Several of the days show a similar percentage of short sales to the the 35% you found so alarming on black monday.

Am I looking at the wrong percentage (were you more concerned with tick exempt shorts)? Were you focussing particularly on certain days - e.g. 2/26 when we broke 1.25 where the short percentage was a little lower?

I also noticed that there is a huge difference between the total volume reported here and the total volume listed in other, less official, places (I took the open/close prices from Yahoo and they showed almost double the volume on most days). Another possible source of my confusion.

There is a sense in which you are right that at least 65% of the action on each of the days was sales of long shares and that is a big part, but if there is supposed to be a contrast between this and the sept. data, I don't see it.