Re EXEL and the alleged spike in short interest

As they say in these parts, "well, poop."

You are right. Not sure how I managed to...you know. But I did.

I apologize profusely.

Now, as far as a more reliable, more timely indication of shorting activity, there is none that is free. There might be one or two that are available to the elite and come with a hefty price tag, but they're not commonly advertised. Which is to say, you have to be one of "them" to even know about it. Which is to say, they don't "exist."

The SEC didn't do away with the uptick rule for no reason. The SEC didn't, for years, deny that naked shorting existed, let alone be much of a problem for no reason.

There is another website that reports short volume, but it's the same data, with the same disclosure. It's just more elaborate. www.shortanalytics.com/index.html

Again, sorry. I screwed up.

Oh, and how to link an image to these pages:

1) go to the website with the image.
2) get the image.
3) right click on the image and select "copy image location"
4)click that, and it goes to your clipboard
5) come here and look at the icons above. 2nd row, below and to the right of the B, click on that and you get a dialog box wherein you can paste the URL of the image.

And you get this:


Now, looking back at news at that time, I find a short bait item about EXEL hitting a 52-wk high on 6/29/16. Shorts like to hit that figuring there will be a pullback. Also, on 6/30/16, a PR about PFE and its acquisition of Anacor and how this might "kickstart merger activity." Another short bait item.

But as you can see from the (correct) chart, shorting activity fell dramatically, and the EXEL pps kept going up impressively (about 20% to date).

So, I would say this, there is no single indicator that works all of the time. There's no combination of indicators that works all of the time. And there are apparently 11M short shares (maybe more) that are woefully under water some 30 days later (if they haven't covered).

Personally, I would not venture to urge caution based on the above or anything else I see on the charts or in the news. Everybody should always be cautious without being told.