RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:2023 VGCX Revised Production Guidance - Misguided? Well we may not know who is shorting VGCX but according to FINTEL's website, the "Short Interest % Float" is only 0.53% or about 350,000 shares. This low amount of shares available to short would be less of an issue if the daily shares traded wasn't around 200,000 to 300,000 shares.
If you look at the FINTEL link
VGCX Victoria Gold Corp Stock - Share Price, Short Interest, Short Squeeze, Borrow Rates (TSE) (fintel.io) and in particular the area showing "Short Shares Availability" you can see that at the start of each day (or just about every day) there is 450,000 VGCX shares available to borrow for shorting and just like clock work, everyday someone borrows about 390,000 shares in the early AM hours and then within about 6 hours returns them.
From the time stamp and comparing my time in Alberta to the time on FINTEL it appears that whoever is borrowing them is about 5 to 6 hours earlier than my time in Alberta so it appears they are trading on a European or Asian trading exchange. I had at one time suspected that the shorting might be by our largest shareholder and hedgefund GMT Capital but they are based in Atlanta so I've kind of ruled them out. Plus their VGCX holdings seem fairly static. GMT is sitting at around a 9.9% position in VGCX so if they were to start buying more shares, even at this low price, they would quickly push themselves over 10% and into having to comply with SEC rules and report their trades which institutional investors generally like to avoid. I've always said that if GMT Capital wanted to they've got the financial means to drive this stock up pretty fast and I suspect when the time is right they'll do just that so beware shorters!
The main problem is with such a low number of shorted shares, it could even be some of the smaller funds that hold VGCX shares and are just playing both sides of the trade. I've considered subscribing to FINTEL in order to perhaps get access to near real time short data to see who is borrowing these shares but am not sure if that info is available. If it was it would be worth the expense. The system is definitely designed to favour the crooks and not for the retail shareholder.
It is a bit concerning that someone can take our share price down to this rediculous level with a little bad news and a mere 400,000 short shares but that seems to be the reality until it is clear that VGCX management has production back on track and cashflow is back to at least 2021 levels. The dollar value of 400,000 VGCX shares at today's price is only about $2.4 million which is really nothing for an institutional shareholder to play with.
I think one way to perhaps solve this shorting dilema is for VGCX to borrow all of these 450,000 shares available daily for shorting and pay the daily interest cost themselves (as a company expense). Essentially taking them out of play for the short seller(s). Not sure what it would cost but based on the "Short Borrow Fee Rates" but it probably is an insignificant dollar amount when factored into VGCX over budget. I'm not sure if such a move would even be allowed by the SEC but it seems it would sure be worth checking into.
VGCX Finance guy...are you listening? I do know one thing for sure and that is VGCX share price is at least half of what it should be and no one is getting my shares at $6.00. If the gold price keeps climbing in the coming weeks back over $2,000 US per ounce and 2024 and 2025 production gets to or exceeds the 200K ounces target, and annual cashflows reach $160 million, there's going to be a lot of retail shareholders saying shoulda, woulda, coulda by this time next year!
HB77