"It does NOT however detail ALL of the shorted transactions."
Transactions are not what matter. What matters are open short POSITIONS.
The "need" to cover or the potential for future covering is driven ONLY by the amount of open short POSITIONS...also called short interest.
This is the fundamental misunderstanding, that transactions are thought the be open positions and they are not.
OTC short report is regurgitating the FINRA daily short volume report which is simply showing how many LONG transactions where done with the first leg being a short sale...it does not in anyway reflect the fact that the second leg (in most cases within seconds) covers that transaction. The reason it gets "marked" short is because FINRA trade reporting rules require that ONLY the first leg of the transaction gets marked to the tape. (ALL completed transactions between a buyer and a seller have TWO legs).
So at the end of the day whether the short VOLUME report is 1% or 99% of the days trading volume that amount of short interest or open short positions at the end of the day is still ZERO.
No different than if someone deposited $1 million into your -$0- balance bank account and then it was removed one second later. At the end of the day you would still have $0 in that account.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
