RE:RE:Buyback@Clarence, it's getting risky to short a growing and profitable company at such low ratios since the profit is limited on the downside. Hedge funds have the ability to play both sides and they gladly will follow profits. Back when P/E was near 60x it was a reasonable time to short and I did it myself to insure my position since it was too large to sell quickly. A more conservative 15x P/E puts AVO shares at $27 by next year so I wouldn't bet against that.
The cheap shares available at high volume are a boon to both the company buying back and shorts covering since they rarely get that opportunity. To answer your questions, if hedge funds decide to follow the company they can massage the market the exact same way on the upside so manipulation could continue until volume grows substantially. Last time we hit $13 the stock ended up at $25 within weeks.