I'll say it again: I don't think anybody thinks that the FINRA number means that that many shares are shorted each day and HELD until the next day, or forever. I think that some of it occasionally is market makers temporarily shorting to fill a trade (VERY occasionally, judging from my experience of waiting over 10 minutes for a fill when I wanted to buy at the ask). I think lots of it is intraday shorting by people playing for pennies, and is covered by the end of the day so it is a temporary day-traders' short. And I think some of it is market makers playing games to manipulate price, as I have observed on days when I've watched the tape of trades and have seen obvious weird things happening.

Again: I don't think that anyone is saying that every single share listed as short on the intraday numbers is a permanent short.

The all-or-nothing characterization of these trades is causing a great deal of confusion here.

I wish everyone would just stop beating this poor dead horse, and if the numbers bother you, put AlanC on ignore. We're not going to be attracting new readers here until there is some kind of big news, and when there is big news, AlanC won't be posting those numbers any more.