Up to April 15th the number of shares reported as being short was 235,500....which in the grand scheme of things isn't a lot, its not even 1% of the approximately 105.5 million shares outstanding, in point of fact it's 0.22%

The current number could be much different, in the trading after the 15th to present I count volume of almost 400K.  But assuming its still in that same ball park, then shorts have done very well as the PPS was in and around $2.20 back at mid month and its been declining steadily since then.

I would argue that Monday isn't just a big day for longs, its also a big day for those individuals (or individual if its just one) who have an open short position.  If the company isn't forthcoming with some positive news soon, then anyone with shares to cover could be looking at a cheap and profitable cover...

Covering around $2 would cost less than $500,000.......about $470K.

The flip side of course is that if the company does come out with something that grabs the attention of investors, perhaps like Ziopharm did in the example I gave earlier from January 2015, then shorts could be looking at covering at a big loss or having to dig deep to fund margin accounts.  

The next update comes out on the 3rd or 4th of May and will be current up til Friday April 28th.  We could have a pretty good idea of how short players decided to play things heading into the B&B conference then.  

I have a deep contrarian streak.....but it tends to be strongest when a stock is moving down, and it weakens when the PPS is moving up....that's something I have to work on.  But too many times I've seen a stock trade higher in advance of bad news, which allows those shorting max profits when the bad news hits.  Likewise I have seen stocks trade down in advance of good news, allowing those buying to get a good price.  Sometimes though things play out exactly as one would think they would...down ahead of bad news and then lower after, or up ahead of good news and then higher.

We shall see what happens Monday.....and tomorrow for that matter.  The big money players are on the field making things happen, I'm up here in the cheap seats as a spectator.  

Stream of conciousness program, disengage.