PIMCO Tactical Income Units Class A T.PTI

The RE: shorts?

[blindpig]

The last time I checked PTI's short position on Oct 15 was already 12.8 million.  It is listed now as an increase of 5 million to 13.2 million.  It would mean that the short position actually decreased from Oct 15 to Dec 31 by 4.5 million and then increased from Dec 31 by 5 million as listed.  The total shares traded from Oct 16 to Dec 13 were 5.6 million so it would require that the majority of these were covering shorts for the position to fall by 4.5 million.  There were no large block trades during this period. The share price also declined from $4 to $3 which also does not make sense if there was a large amount of short coverings.

There are 10 trading days for this 5 million increase so 0.5 million shares would need to be shorted everyday and trading volume is usually very much less than this.  There were however large blocks trades with volumes of +3 million and +2 million on two of the days and this volume would then have needed to be mostly sold short.  This would mean the shorter would need to line up a buyer to sell these shares and would need to be able to get hold of 5 million shares to short. 

My feeling is that there is 13.1 million shares shorted and this has been steady for quite some time.  The large decrease and then increase is probably due to short positions not being calculated correctly.  It is possible that there was a 5 million increase as suggested by the large block trades earlier in the month, but these sells would have then needed to find a buyer and the share price has been generally increasing which would also be somewhat strange.

Stand by my comments.  No shoe will likely fall.  Trecroce was there to give the bad news.  If there was more coming they would have kept him longer to tell us.  Wheeler has been hired to increase the share price and as not been hired to restructure the company.  Good news will come probably in the form of some new large contracts for Mova that will send the shares soaring as shorts will need to start to cover.  13.1 million shares will need to be bought eventually.