Here's the short interest on the OTC.
https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/XEBEF/quote#short-interest Notice how the short interest jumped up 400K shares in the first 2 weeks of January 2022. If you look at the charts for XEBEF on Stockwatch.com, you could guestimate that perhaps 600- 650K shares traded for the first 2 weeks of the year. About 2/3rds of the shares of the total shares traded were shorted!?
Where did the shorter find shares to short? A high short position is when it takes more than say 8 - 10 days to cover. Based on the attached chart it will take about 90 days to cover which is extremely, extremely high. IMHO this is a case of naked shorting using phantom shares. It's manipulative and illegal.
"Naked shorting, when shorters sell shares they don’t own and have made no arrangements to buy.
As we noted in our recent expose on naked short selling, this harmful setup gives traders the ability to endlessly sell phantom shares and manipulate the share prices to their benefit in a direct challenge to the free market.
If the task force makes good on its plans, it would essentially make it impossible to do any naked short selling.
So far, naked shorters have gotten away with their destructive market tactics due to a loophole that requires them to have a “reasonable expectation” of settling a trade without actually borrowing the stock. That loophole may have turned the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) into a free-for-all.
The disruption doesn’t end there, either. Stocks are sent into a tailspin when shorters fail to settle a trade and cannot find any stock to buy back, meaning that there are more shares which seem to be outstanding than there really are on the market. It’s an existential crisis for companies targeted by naked shorters. While technically, traders only have two days to settle those shorts, they are often given 10 days under “exceptional circumstances”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-This-The-Beginning-Of-The-End-Of-Naked-Short-Selling-In-Canada.html
I don't have visibility on what is happening on the TSX, but as XBC trades dominantly on the TSX I would say as manipulation is occurring on the OTC, it is likely occurring on the TSX.
XBC appears to be hit harder than the cleantech sector to a point where unlike others, it is trading at a ridiculous valuation (below book). The shorters are not resp. for all of XBC's decline, but given how some will argue it's fundamentals have improved and is much better than others, the extra downward move towards deep value territory can be said to be due to manipulation by shorters.
I think a lot of us noticed how the rallies have all failed. That's not a "random walk", IMHO it's all orchestrated. We're in awe at where the share price is because it makes no sense on a valuation basis and we're looking for skeletons in Q4 despite the recent management affirmation that Q4 will be in line.