My post was a reply that supplied the content of the link in the post I was replying to.
Frankly, I have my doubts about the 'full truth' of the information presented, namely, whether that many shares were actually shorted.
Type this question into Google-search:
"can normal market maker trading be misinterpreted as short selling?"
Normal market-maker activity can appear to generate short sales. That's what I think was misrepresented as short sales that (temporarily) put GTVH at the top of the short-sellers list.
If you type this question into Google-search (and believe the AI-summary answer):
"do stock traders actually short sell sub-penny stocks"
This part of the answer:
Margin Requirements: FINRA rules impose stringent margin requirements for low-priced stocks. For stocks priced under $2.50, you often need to have $2.50 per share of equity as collateral, which is a much higher percentage requirement than for a standard stock.
would seem to discourage discourage shorting triple-zero stocks, especially if the alleged amount of shares being shorted is 100M+.
To recap, that link I quoted said:
OTC Top 3 most-shorted Stocks (based on Share Volume not Dollar Value): $GTVH 100,546,145 shares
Rounding down, 100M shares times $2.50 per share of margin requirement is $250M. Who -- individually or collectively -- is going to risk (or put-up) that to short that many shares of a triple zero stock?
Since GTVH was trading at about $.0005 per share at the time, 100M shares times that is $50,000. Even if someone could collect on a short bet at a buy-back price of $.0001, that's only $40,000. Sure that's not 'chump change' to a regular retail trader, but typically only profession traders short sub-penny stocks (according to Google-search). Again, is that worth tying up $250M in a backing margin account?
If my numbers and/or interpretations are wrong, I'm sure someone will tell me. But I still think that 'short sales' number was normal market-maker activity.