Dundee / Short positionI like the fact that the short position on PLI has increased and that Dundee is seemingly fuelling a short play on this stock. I am willing to bet that the very unusual "Update" put out by David Martin has something to do with the fact that these guys and/or one or two of their hedge or momentum clients made a bunch of money on the last sharp move down and they think they can do it again.
I have noticed over the course of the last year that both "Anonymous" and "Dundee" use what institutional traders call "signatures" or "flags". An aggressive trader will quite often throw up a big block of stock on either the bid or the offer to try to fuel further buying or selling and "work" their underlying position. If you watch the depth of market on PLI regularly, you'll see that Dundee has been doing this regularly. The trader puts up a block for sale, its always for 14,600 shares. It almost always shows up on down days . The effect is to manipulate the stock downward to work a short position and to get in the face of any real sellers. It also serves to put buyers on the sidelines because it makes it look like there's a large motivated seller....
There's no doubt whatsoever that a large institution can manipulate a thin and relatively small stock like PLI. I think that is exactly what we're seeing here.
However, these guys have gotten away with this manipulation because of the fact that there really hasnt been any one big event or series of events to really push the stock higher and bring in new buying. This time I think they'll get burned.
Those of us that understand this story know that things coming down in the next few months are things that will have a huge positive impact on this stock, likely by bringing in large new buyers that are exposed to this story by the very public and topical nature of the upcoming developments.
The bottom line is this, the larger the short position, the more buyers there'll be when the tide turns.... Given how much pain these guys have inflicted both in terms of their terrible coverage and manipulation, I for one am going to savour the smell of them getting burned.