Short is shorting and appears to be coordinating his sales...obviously...
You mention.."Complete indifference to launch "next week"...yes, its next week!
The "seller" is the short(or his proxy)...how hard is that to understand?
The short could care less about the launch...he is trying to keep SP down at all costs. IMHO there will not be relief from the pressure until launch.
And yes...their is a market maker trying to control the bid/ask for the short at the eod. There were bids over $2 at end..but not shown.
If you were short a boatload (more like an ocean-liner) of shares wouldn't you try to keep the price under $2 to avoid uplisting of DSNY and to avoid having to cover those shares?
In the end... we will have the last laugh with the Mother Load of a short squeeze...
We really dont know how many share short the Canadian firm is because they can "naked short" in Canada ...but it is rumored in dollars to be over $35M....that's 17.5M shares...
ps. a naked short doesn't have to find shares from sellers...most likely he cannot find sellers...so he's selling a naked short and is not borrowing those shares from sellers because there probably arent any or enough.
Short answer (pun intended) is that the short trader takes his counterparty's shares and sells them on the open market. All he needs to do that are buyers looking to but cheapies, of which there are plenty. Collusion isn't necessary, just a counterparty who believes the price will rise and therefore doesn't mind permitting his shares to be sold at today's bargain price.
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