To be or not to be: Fake shareholders Don’t be ashamed to own who you are. Many short sellers on this board claim they own the stock and then proceed to tell you what they plan to do which is a big tell that they are in fact short sellers wanting to claim they are one of you to get your trust and then proceed to fleece you. All short sellers want is to convince that giving them your money is in your best interest. By recommending actions that will increase the supply of shares so that they can buy them to cover. So they tell you that you are better off selling now, or selling call options at these extremely low prices which is a con or scaring you with comments like the dividend is not well covered, the future is dark… Planting fear, uncertainty and doubts (FUD) are just one of the many tools they use to control the supply side by encouraging existing shareholders to sell and dissuading potential buyers because both are competing with them over the millions of shares they shorted and that they need to cover over a period of time. Short sellers use put options mostly to short stocks, direct short selling is only a tiny percentage of the total number because put options allow them to fly under the radar.