I guess Bernard will give an answer when he has a bit of spare time, but in the mean time you can read below one of his old post in wich he was giving his point of view on the subject of short selling.

I actually think your post is relevant.  Retail investors need to be aware that there is short selling happening.  Being informed helps avoid being manipulated, hence why I regularly post the short report on HPQ canadian market.

Link to Bernard's post

Hi All,

As many of you are aware, for some time now I have been very public with my view that high-frequency traders with a short bias on HPQ have been trying to manipulate our share price to make money.

I have waited until the latest versions of both IIROC Short Sale Trading Statistic Summary Report and IIROC Consolidated Short Report were publish before writing this. Why, because this reporting period is the first where I can eliminate the effect of cashless warrant exercise on the short reports.

These reports validate my position.

It pretty clear that during the last two weeks of September 2020, High-Frequency Predatory shorts were very active.  Declared trading activities (3,4889,265 at an average price of $0.44) represented more than 10% of all the volume generated (13.78%) and the cash value of all the share traded (13.88%).  (The 10% threshold, indicate abnormal short trading activities).

Furthermore, the High-Frequency Predatory shorts used these two weeks to increase the size of there open short position from 128,563 as of September 15, 2020, to 701,122 as of September 30, 2020.

With an average selling price around $0.444 and assuming that they are paying banks 10% interest to borrow the shares, it seems logical to believe that these traders need to get the stock price below $0.40 to break even.

What they are most probably doing now is to placing many open sells orders on the Ask.  Doing that, they can demotivate long investors all the while allowing them to sell more shares short at a higher price, increasing their average selling price.

In parallel, these short will deploy their agent of disinformation on many BB to start trying to create a negative perception of the Company and its management.  

Until regulators get serious about this, the best thing I can do is inform shareholders of what is going on, and by doing so exposing these scums to a bit more scrutiny and light then they are used too.

While I cannot give any trading advice or recommendations, I can point out the fact that short need to buy back there shares below $0.44 to breakeven...

(That is most probably why you see post mentioning that CEO's should not waste time worrying about the share price movement, because if more of us did that, they would have a much harder time making money by shorting).

Regards,

Bernard Tourillon