New investors, the statement "59% of today's volume was short sales" wasn’t in the source file. The most recent short interest is < 1% of the OS and the most recent failure-to-deliver (naked short) # is a measly 19,585 shares. IMHO interpreting short volume as actual short sales is incorrect. This is what FINRA, the exact same source which you used to post the #, said.
"Thank you for contacting FINRA’s Office of the Ombudsman. Regarding your question, it would be incorrect to assume that short sales comprise 32% of the total volume on that trading day for IPIX. FINRA publishes the daily short sale volume pursuant to an SEC mandate; however, there are various trading anomalies that result in the reported short sale volume often being exaggerated. Thus, the true total short sales volume may be significantly lower than the volume that is reported. Third parties sometimes ignore this and try to claim the ratio is valid to further their own objectives."
If the credibility of the ombudsman is questioned, the validity of the daily #s should be questioned as well because they are both from FINRA. How can the daily #s be credible if the source (MMs) who provided the data are colluded?
You can also check out these two posts for some detailed explanations.
Here are the official short interest and failure-to-deliver data.
Settlement Date: 12/15/2017 Current Short: 1,125,087 Previous Short: 1,129,343 Change: -4,256 (-0.38%) Average Daily Volume: 1,046,247 Days to Cover: 1.08
“In a “naked” short sale, the seller does not borrow or arrange to borrow the securities in time to make delivery to the buyer within the standard two-day settlement period. As a result, the seller fails to deliver securities to the buyer when delivery is due (known as a ”failure to deliver” or “fail”).”