That is not how it actually works. People tend to over simplify what is a complex process. And it is complex for good reasons. For example, a short sale by a broker lives in a kinda suspended animation until settlement occurs. Kind of like Schrodinger’s Cat, until the box is opened on settlement day you cannot tell if it was a long trade, short interest or naked.
But let’s start with one basic fact. An open short position CANNOT be hidden. It can no more be hidden than you could hide a withdrawal from your bank account from your bank.
Now there has certainly been some shenanigans in the past that have occurred to try and get around things like forced buyins and threshold list triggers…but those things occurred in a different regulatory environment. One mechanism was “deep-in-the-money calls”. But Reg 204 got rid of that last loophole many years ago.
The issues you see today with brokers generally entail some “books and records” issue where a broker is mis-marking a trade or not paying enough attention to their clients activities.
But NONE of those involve or result in some “hiding” of a short position.
But all the above is moot when it comes to MIKP. It can’t be shorted, has zero short interest and zero failures to deliver.
A lot of things could happen to the stock when it goes pink, but none of it will involve shorting.
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