RE:short interest as at October 31 - increase of 721K shares
Monty, interested in your take on this. Here is mine.
By any measure, there is very little interest in shorting these shares and the increase of 721K shares you indicate is of no significance.
The two measures of short interest are: 1. number of shares shorted as a percentage of the overall float; 2. days needed to cover.
From what I read, by the first measure you would need a 20 per cent ratio to be considered high. Here, we have 206.17 million shares outstanding in WELL, and less than 3 million shares shorted. Somewhere between one and two percent then, even if you exclude the shares that are not publicly traded.
As for the second measure, assuming generously and conservatively an average of one million shares traded daily, with 2,861,876 shares shorted, it would take three days for shorts to cover if it all happened at once. I found the quote below in an article on the subject.
"A day to cover of between 1 and 4 usually indicates strong positive sentiment and a lack of interest from short-sellers"
So what I gather from the figures Monty presents is that interest in shorting WELL is very low, and therefore the numbers presented are indicate of positive sentiment for WELL shares.