Shelly Albaum
Sep 13, 2018
Here is the ChromaDex short interest chart, updated through August 31, 2018:
Unfortunately, the data on this chart ends less than two weeks before September's great Honig Drama Event in which ChromaDex's share price experienced extreme turbulence, dropping from about $4.50 to $3.50 before regaining half that. I'd be eager to know how much of that turbulent movement was shorting or covering. Maybe we'll find out and be able to consider that in a future post.
In the chart through August we can see that between November 30, 2017 and June 29, 2018, short interest rose steadily from 2.7M shares to 6M shares. During that same period, share price dropped unevenly from $6.92 to $3.71. This illustrates a strong correlation between short interest and share price.
Then in the first two weeks of July, the opposite dynamic occurred, with short interest dropping suddenly by 800K shares, while price rose by nearly a dollar.
After that it's not as clear -- shorts began to cover, but the price didn't go up -- as if the short sellers were buying back into a price decline, as if word of the impending Honig complaint had somehow gotten out.
Or, if you view the glass as 20% empty instead of 80% full, you could ask why ANY miserable incompetent shorts would cover a million shares at $4.50 just moments before the share price dropped by another dollar.