CTB
Cooper Tire & Rubber Co.
stock NYSE

What I recently learned is that ETFs hold a lot of WOLF, far more than I thought. And we wondered for a long time where all the shares to borrow come from. Because a sane investor wouldn’t lend their shares to the short sellers for ruining the share price. But the ETFs absolutely don’t care about the value of the shares they hold on behalf. Hence, the ETFs lend their shares and profit from the interest.
Shares held on margin would also be subject to being lent. But I guess that not too many WOLF shares are held on margin. By now everyone would have been margin called.
Pretty sure the short sellers also went naked sometimes. The has been a lot of FTD after short attacks and sometimes it took a while to clear.
There would be means to hide naked shorting, but I don’t know how that works exactly.
If the high CTB persist, it would make shorting WOLF unprofitable. On the other hand side, short sellers made billions so far. Losing money through interest or options premiums as hedge probably doesn’t matter much.

Shorts are covering at least by part, because if you follow the CTB and available short shares, it correlates to the price right now.
It could also just be new naked shorting.
But nobody can tell for sure, I'm only saying that there is more pressure for the shorts in case of a rapid rise in CTB. However, selling (buying back the shares) shorts should actually make it easier to borrow some shorts, so this should actually drop the price. The newly risen CTB must have something to do with some new event. It could be ETFs, but it does not have to.

Do you think that through ETFs, the hedgies can short better, and now that the ETFs got rebalanced out of WOLF, the hedgies have to give up, by part, the naked shorting? There is really nothing else that comes to mind.

What I recently learned is that ETFs hold a lot of WOLF, far more than I thought. And we wondered for a long time where all the shares to borrow come from. Because a sane investor wouldn’t lend their shares to the short sellers for ruining the share price. But the ETFs absolutely don’t care about the value of the shares they hold on behalf. Hence, the ETFs lend their shares and profit from the interest.
Shares held on margin would also be subject to being lent. But I guess that not too many WOLF shares are held on margin. By now everyone would have been margin called.
Pretty sure the short sellers also went naked sometimes. The has been a lot of FTD after short attacks and sometimes it took a while to clear.
There would be means to hide naked shorting, but I don’t know how that works exactly.
If the high CTB persist, it would make shorting WOLF unprofitable. On the other hand side, short sellers made billions so far. Losing money through interest or options premiums as hedge probably doesn’t matter much.

Shorts are covering at least by part, because if you follow the CTB and available short shares, it correlates to the price right now.
It could also just be new naked shorting.
But nobody can tell for sure, I'm only saying that there is more pressure for the shorts in case of a rapid rise in CTB. However, selling (buying back the shares) shorts should actually make it easier to borrow some shorts, so this should actually drop the price. The newly risen CTB must have something to do with some new event. It could be ETFs, but it does not have to.

Do you think that through ETFs, the hedgies can short better, and now that the ETFs got rebalanced out of WOLF, the hedgies have to give up, by part, the naked shorting? There is really nothing else that comes to mind.