RE:Shorts will win on betting against SuncorFrankly in my experience, I don't believe that what is going on over the last couple of weeks is a short attack. The evidence in terms of short positions suggests that the shorts have in fact been closing out their positions and that if anything would be supportive of the SP.
Further short attacks tend have some "violence" associated with them - meaning sharp downward spikes in the SP and higher than normal degree of volatility. Neither has been evident IMO.
Soooo...what else could it be?
To me this has all the earmarks of people through various means that are associated with the company know that there is some bad news that managment has not yet revealed and are getting out before negative surprise in the 3Q report. NO - they are not tipped off by managment!! They could be workers at SU or SU subcontractors or law firms that have a window into what is going on.
Hard to say what to say what it might be but the most likely culprit would Fort Hills. We know that there are problems there already and the problems are related to unforseen forces of nature (water). It could be the base plant but it is (pardon the pun) mainly on remote control and so IMO it unlikely that the problem lies there.
All the market pros have more sophisticated models than the people here have to assess the numbers for SU and the associated FCF. Despite what appears to be some great numbers expected in the 3Q report regarding FCF, it seems nobody on The Street is excited about SU and thinks it is a steal and buying it up and raising the SP beyond what happened a few weeks ago.
To me that is a worrying signal - call me a worry wart if you like but for me after years investing in the market going back decades this is a red flag for me. So - a word of advice - be careful out there