Interesting Chico, I follow the charts as well and have seen the decrease in volume in the past two weeks.
Concerning the end game, I am not sure you can make an educated guess from just the charts. If your friend wants to check out something, have him check out the SEC filings and the whole story. Especially the point where all publicly traded companies in the VDI trust went private and are not filing SEC reports now.
The end game scenarios:
1. Liquidate current equity holdings, which leaves roughly 30 cents per share.
2. Let it ride and the price will grow organically.
3. Since they are now a private company in the trust the shares that are publicly trade will be bought at a premium price, which is the reason they are hedging the price daily, suppress the price and you will not have to buy the shares at a higher price.
Regardless of which scenario happens shares will have to be dealt with because they are in liquidation, common shares are the only debt that was not signed over to the parent company or put into the restructuring agreement.
One last thing I have never considered this a short and am 10 fold profit now, but if you are just coming to the table you must understand that you might not see big gains as long as they are in Liquidation and the end date for Liquidation to end is uncertain and the only thing that gives me an educated guess is the SEC filings from VDI, because they are painting the picture.