I have posted this in the past, but not in a while

I have posted this in the past, but not in a while.

I obtained most of my shares through Paulson buys and subsequent warrant exercises. I have/had a low six digit position, now held at Schwab. Originally, they were all paper shares at my house. It took a while to get them to Schwab, but they have been there for about seven months.

They had a restrictive legend on them when I sent them to Schwab and I need to have Rule 144 permission to sell them. Schwab and Cytodyn have assisted me ably in obtaining and maintaining this permission for a while. The permission is only good for 90 days at a time, and I just renewed for my third ninety day period.

I have sold about 15,000 shares over the past 3 months, usually about 1,500 at a time (so about 10 trades). Every time I make a sale, it is recorded as selling short at Schwab. They give me the cash right away (but I have a lot of cash in my account, which I think they consider collateral). They always tell me that the sale doesn't really settle for several weeks because it is a short sale and something is happening behind the scenes to "clean up" my certificates (remove the legend).

My point here is that I have a hunch that some large chunk of the shares we all see as being held short or sold short are from people like me. There were a lot of Paulson buyers and warrant exercisers over the years. (I also think that the Fife sales, and maybe the insider sales, are recorded as short sales for similar reasons, but can't prove that.)

Clearly, the "bad" shorts have been here many times. But, I don't personally believe they are as pervasive as many think.