I'm saying the decrease is healthy....down from 162K to 96K. The drop is equal to a few days trading given recent volumes.

While I would agree that shorts are able to push the price lower, obvioulsy given volumes of just a few tens of thousands in a day, and sometimes not even that....borrowing and then reselling 10K, 20K....100K shares, its going to impact the PPS. The short seller imo is confident though, that by artificially increasing the float (selling shares that don't in fact exist, because 2 parties now have ownership of the same thing) that longs will get nervous and allow him to buy the shares back at a lower price.

Retail investors as I've said at least fifty times are notoriously nervous and price sensitive.

You're right, 96K or even 162K...its nothing, a drop in the bucket, when measured against outstanding shares over 100 million. But look at it in terms of the days to cover. With volumes at 20-30K per session short sellers are looking at 3 or 4 days total volume.

As for a blackout period....I doubt it. And as for Dart, Hepa and other "smart money" types not loading up.....they might be. But unlike retailers who love buying in and watching the PPS climb, smart money types like to establish their positions at the lowest possible cost basis and they're not going to simply storm in and bid up the price until they've established their desired position.

I've sure I've shared it before, but here's the link again describing what I believe may very well explain what's been happening here.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-richard-wyckoff-stock-trading-method-2013-2

Its manipulation that's been going on since the markets began.