Yeah same for me..link just opens this page again.

Interestingly @mikebrisy I looked at Shortman.com.au and IEL is one of their top listed shorted companies @ 12.34%.

Yes, @tomsmithidg IDP Education (IEL.asx) has been over 12% shorted for almost a year now, as shown below.

And the shorters should have made plenty of coin out of IEL as IEL's graph is all top left to bottom right, i.e. in a strong downtrend for the past two years.

The shorters are often right, but there's profit to be made when they're wrong and all trying to squeeze out through one exit door at the same time (known as a short squeeze).

Other companies that are regularly up at the top of the short list are lithium companies, uranium companies, plus companies with serious governance concerns who have already been smashed and may well have further to fall, such as MIN (the third most shorted company on the ASX 4 days ago, according to the list today) and casino operator Star Entertainment Group (SGR, @ #7).

It also pays to note that oftentimes these shorters are NOT ahead of the game, they often act more like ambulance chasers, in that they wait for a company to become very unloved by the market and they take the position that the selling has further to go than investors who are still in the company are anticipating.

Here's one example of that:

The net shorts were below 2% with DRO through until the second half of September, while the share price of DRO went into that serious downtrend back in July, so the majority of the shorters got onboard after the DRO share price had already dropped -$1, or -40% from its $2.50/share high.

I am not interested in DRO and never have been, however I do note that DRO's share price has recently risen +33% from 60 cps to 80 cps, and the shorts have not declined - if anything they've increased. Those shorters who got in at higher levels are still in the money, which would be most of them, but any that started shorting at around that 60 cps to 70 cps level may well have recently exited at a loss (covered their shorts) already.

What they're really looking for, in terms of a signal to pull up stumps, is anything that suggest the downtrend is over and a rebound is happening - back into an uptrend. In DRO's case, the recent +33% rally looks like a hiccup because of how far they'd fallen to get to 60 cps in the first place, so the shorters that are still in them are likely thinking it's a short term rally within a longer downtrend.

Like @mushroompanda (see here) and others, I do occasionally look at short levels but only to see if there's an additional opportunity there to make money during a short squeeze, and only after I've done my DD and decided to invest in a company based on my view of them and their future potential, both short and long term. In other words, if shorters are on the playing field in significant numbers, it's good to know, but is unlikely to change the way I play the game.