The market sets the price!l agree! And the marketmaker sets the price trend.
Short sales are an anomaly designed by marketmakers, bankers, brokers and investment funds, most of whom have access to insider information that retail investors don't have.
My opinion is that it is wrong to sell something you don't own and if you do the rightful owner should know about it before a broker capitalizes on the shortsale and the finder's fee and usury rates if the shortsale seeker finances the play to participate. Kicking back some of that fee money to the guy who really owns the stock would help curtail the tidal wave of shorts and take some of the enthusiasm out of doing the deal for those that arrange this tactic.
When the marketmakers et al join forces and spread bad news about the company they are shorting, it can kill companies of good potential.
I want to see shortselling outlawed and I delight in seeing Reddit/Gamestop short squeezes and wish there were more of these to wipe out shortsellers altogether, especially the insiders that seem to operate with impunity.
I have noticed that the SEC and watchdogs are paying more attention to this tactic and hopefully will outlaw it for the sake of the integrity of ipos that are a vital financing vehicle for new companies of potential.
Retail investors can be wiped out in a heartbeat because they don't have the network that marketmakers have to disseminate information or the financial limits to stay in the game until they benefit.
Companies of good potential are snuffed before the playing field is levelled for them to prosper and a vital form of financing for these companies is diminished and their personal investments in their companies makes it's way to the guys who can buy the poker pot.
If this shortselling is going to continue, retail investors need access to the same info that marketmakers have access to like volumes of shortsales, insiders who are working against or for the trade and institutional investors who are participating and it needs to be timely and free or cheap enough for retail investors to have access.
Maybe AI could work on this and cloud providers could deliver it.