I think that you are misinterpreting what Alan's p
Post# of 72440
He's not saying that the FINRA daily number, which has varied from 7% to 78% that I have seen, means that those shares are shorted AND HELD SHORT at the end of the day. Certainly everyone is aware that there are day traders who buy or short shares for time periods varying from a minute to hours, but who CLOSE those positions on the same day. Alan has never claimed that those share were shorted and HELD short. Rather, he is posting a number that has varied widely, and that some of us find entertaining, the same way that some people find baseball box scores entertaining (which I personally do not). Several of us have had difficulty on more than one occasion getting trades filled, even though we put in a bid at the ASK price -- which should have resulted in an instantaneous fill. Instead we waited for as much as 10 minutes (in my case) -- so the argument that the FINRA number represents market makers temporarily shorting to keep markets efficient is NOT true. They may do that sometimes, but by my personal experience, this has not been the case.
I do not think that Alan is trying to scare new investors with this. There is no evidence that the number scares anyone, and there is no evidence that Alan has any malign intent. However, some people who are definitely bashers have been attacking Alan for this. (I am not throwing mud at sox here or implying that HE is a short, just observing that some known bashers are attacking Alan.)
And, I think that if someone is concerned about scaring people away from this stock, continuing to make a big deal out of this is certainly counterproductive to the cause.
By the way, experienced investors know that a good company with a high short interest is ripe for a massive short squeeze which will BENEFIT shareholders, as the price skyrockets up. So, anyone who has done their research on this stock should know that if there IS a high short interest, it's going to be good in the long run when IPIX's clinical trail results come out.
Also, to say that there is no concrete evidence of illegal naked shorting is true. What kind of idiots would leave concrete evidence of their illegal activities out there for anyone to see? But, when you see the extremely odd pattern of trading that we witness routinely -- many pairs of trades with the same number of shares, crossing at the same price (or just very slightly different) -- this pattern is not one that we have seen with stocks that have not suffered attacks from shorters like the Mako hedge fund.