I don't think that anyone can just assume that eve

I don't think that anyone can just assume that every single short sale shown in the FINRA data was merely market makers keeping trading operating smoothly, given that I have seen small trades of mine take minutes to fill. If a market maker were eager to keep trades running quickly, that would have been an ideal moment to temporarily sell shares short. But the market makers didn't do so at least in my case, because my trades did not fill in a typical time frame. I am far from being the only person who has reported this.

We have seen the FINRA data vary from 23% to 70%. I find that to be a startlingly high variation. I find multiple 100 share trades to be unusual, and clearly not something that a retail investor is doing while paying a 5.95/trade commission per trade (or more). Some have claimed that it is not unusual to have trades filled 100 shares at a time, but my experience with many trades of this and other cheap stocks is that is very unusual to have a mere 500 share trade filled with 5 100-share lots, as I recently had (and as many people reported this past spring) -- as opposed to having had 1000 or more shares filled routinely with one trade, as was almost always the case until the Mako article.

I myself find it interesting to see the daily variation in that data, even though I don't know how to interpret it -- how much is market maker activity that is covered quickly and how much of it is actual short sales (as NO ONE without market maker's access to order books can know), and I do not think that that posting this data spreads fear. It's just a data point that I don't know how to interpret.

If none of this data ever reflected any actual short sales, why would there have been the Mako article and concerted bashing attack on this stock? Does anyone really think that the entire Mako attack was orchestrated just so that the Rosen firm could issue a bogus lawsuit (and be paid off to go away)? Or has this stock been attacked by shorts, just as shareholders of other stocks have reported has happened to their stocks?

Another question to ask is: why are actual tallies of open short positions only reported twice a month? In the era of high-frequency trading and powerful computers and software, is it really so difficult to assemble this data that it requires an army of clerks to make this heroic effort twice a month? Is it impossible to think that between these reporting dates, the short positions may become smaller or larger than reported on those dates? Why isn't this useful data made available to traders?

To make my position clear: I don't know what the FINRA daily data means, because I don't have access to the "level 3" data that market makers have. I find it interesting to see the daily number, the same way that I find baseball scores interesting even when they involve teams that have no bearing on the team that I follow. I see no harm in the data being posted, but I do see harm in attempting to sow dissension on a board by personally attacking someone in a way that would not be tolerated on other boards.

Those who are bothered by someone's posts can use the ignore button. Personally, I think that the constant attacks on the posting of this data are far more "distracting" and off-putting to investors than that daily short post.