RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Worth a read on the first There may be a mini-squeeze but many of the shorts have already made their money because of all of the panic and forced selling (due to removal from indices and dividend cut).
We'll have to see what pref A conversion does to the common price. I do agree that covering shorts may offset some of the conversion effects. However, the short position is back to fairly "normal" levels these days for a company like this one. I don't think their covering activity is going to cause a dramatic sky-rocketing price jump because there is so much negative sentiment around this stock. I think when series A conversion occurs, it will drive the stock price down a bit but not as drastically as it would if there were no shorts trying to cover.
If some of the hedge fund types decide they've made enough on the short side and decide to turn it around and start pushing the price up, then things could get interesting. That might cause a squeeze of the straggler shorts as well.