MRKR Shorting
If you look back over 2018, you’ll see that the stock was lightly shorted at well less than 100,000 shares UNTIL the big price pop in early June. Once it got into the 11-13 range, the short interest shot up quickly to 500,000+ shares and continued to climb each short interest reporting period. By end of Aug, there was about 875,000 shares shorted. Then, we had another price pop upward in Sept which only encouraged the shorts further taking short positions to over 1 million and climbing. Just eyeballing it, you might estimate an average price for a short trade from say early Jan to mid Jun would be about $9. The short interest began to fall in mid-Nov and hit bottom for the 4thQ the last part of Dec when price plummeted. Again, eyeballing it, estimate average short buyback price of about $5.50. That would give about a $3.50 per share average gain for the “wise guys” who scaled in shorts between Jun and Nov and then took profits around Xmas.
During the last few days of Dec and into first half of Jan, the stock price was lifting off well from the Xmas lows, and that cued the shorts to go for another bite of the apple during first half of Jan. The last day of 2018 trading had short position at roughly 1.1 million shares and by the Jan 15th report, it was back to just over 1.5 million. You can figure that new 0.4 million shorts occurred at a price around $6.50 on average. So yes, that would say the “wise guys” are expecting a price well below that $6.50 at some point in the future to harvest their profits again. Personally, I would not be surprised if the stock traded at less than half today’s value (~$6 per share at this writing) before the company has a product ready for sale.
My general impression of the shorting game is that it is done by well capitalized experienced traders. They pick easy targets and shake them (think of a piggy bank upside down being shaken with the coins trickling out into their sweaty hands). So what makes an easy target? For starters, a company with no income, and even better if there is no hope for any for at least a year or more. The capital just melts away via expenses and no threat of a hot earning report that surprises to upside. They also love it when there are lots of inexperienced low capital shareholders as they are easy to emotionalize. After all, if people don’t get scared and sell at the very low prices, how are they going to make a good profit? So their main tactic is to sell shares hard and fast and in pulses over several days to traumatize. Leaves the uninformed shareholders to wonder, is this just a short attack, or does someone know something about company I don’t know, or both? Depending on how exposed you feel in the position as a shareholder, it may be your coins dropping out of the piggy bank.
Since MRKR is at this point in its life an “easy target,” you have to expect short attacks from time to time. Once in a while, shorts will get burned with a surprise positive announcement and there will be a price liftoff as they scramble to cover. But more often than not, I think the shorts make money with their tactics. Personally, I believe it should be made illegal to short developmental drug companies under a certain size and without income. Investors put capital in to help develop the new treatments only to have some of it siphoned away by the “wise guys” who provide nothing but volatility in return.
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