The daily short volume report is an accumulated total of SHORT SALES transactions, TRADES, from the EXCHANGE TAPES, per documentation available at FINRA.
For fully listed stocks, e.g. NYSE, or Nasdaq, they also provide the actual trade transactions as a monthly downloadable file which can be verifed as trades and summed to verify against the daily reports. I did that check for my own edification.
Going back to the SEC request to FINRA to provide the information, my notes indicate the request was made to assist in identification of Short Sales and REG SHO problems. I'm providing the info to the board to assist with same. The information is posted daily by FINRA at 5:30 PM ET, 90 minutes after market close.
While I find your suggestions interesting, I have no verification to confirm those statements, and they don't seem to conform to statements by FINRA AND SEC. Please understand, there are many incorrect statements that when retold again and again on boards and websites, become accepted as truth. I'm not doubting your conviction, but I would be cautious in accepting info posted without links or other verification.
Obviously, MCLN is now in REG SHO, and the daily reports preceding that event had clear evidence of that looming possibility.
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