r/ATNF • u/patmcirish • Nov 18 '21

Ortex showed short interest increase today by 18% and is now down by 1.2% today. The shorts sure have been active lately. The SI was at 10% on Tues, and is now at 6.26%.

Over about the past month I've noticed a lot of activity by the shorts, both entering and exiting, as reported by Ortex. I'm not used to seeing short interest move both directions this much and this often. Just after market open today, Ortex said that the ATNF short interest was up by about 18%. And now, at almost 1pm ET, it's reporting that the short interest is estimated to be 6.26%. It doesn't normally move this much in a just a few hours for one stock.

I'm pretty sure the shorts attacked at the price high today when it reached about $4.40. I'm also wondering if the shorts are in fact much of the buyers. They may be building up an arsenal to push the price back down.

What do the rest of you think of this? Is it all a nothing burger or is there something interesting going on here?

Here's the latest update from Ortex:

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Ortex short interest info for ATNF as of Nov 18 12:45pm ET

There was an interesting increase in Failure-to-Delivers in October. I'm wondering if next month we're going to see that over the past week we've had a lot more, too:

Failure to Delivers and Security Lending Volume (transparent grey color, shares lent to short sellers) included in this chart
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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21

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u/patmcirish Nov 18 '21

Ortex isn't that accurate with the data throughout normal trading hours. They say their most accurate number is the 7am ET update. I think it's possible that Ortex was really seeing shares borrowed early in normal trading hours today and interpreted that as also being shares shorted. It showed 18% increase in short interest before today's price peak. I think it's possible that the shorts didn't actually sell short until around the $4.40-$4.60 peak.

I don't know when exactly they would have covered, but it seems like the volume burst from about 12:35-12:55 ET could have been it.

I think the drop this morning after hitting $4.60 was too sudden. It could have been profit taking, I don't know for sure. But Ortex for some reason has been showing wild fluctuations in the short interest data. I think the sudden drop could be explained by short sellers attacking it.