WEB - regained most shorted stock title

This is indeed interesting, as WEB has once again become the most shorted stock as at 2021-03-30  with a bit of an upturn in the total shares shorted graph.

What I find interesting though, is most analysts are still saying that WEB is their preferred travel play, I think it was today again mentioned on Ausbiz.

So I guess if you side with the analysts, the current decline in share price may be an inviting opportunity to buy.

WEB - being reviewed on today's Ausbiz The Call

2021-03-22

WEB being reviewed today in detail as the main stock submitted, rather than as the alternative preferred holding.

Very interesting and positive outlook with respects to the advantage that Webjet will have over smaller competitors as the re-open trade

I recommend watching today's Ausbiz segment when it gets posted online later today.

WEB - Short Positions predictably continue to close out

As foreshadowed the graph shows the continued downward trend in Short Positions held over WEB shares.

As at the 15th of March though here was still 10.76% of the shares on issue shorted, which is 36.4 million shares

Again this week WEB was mentioned as the preffered travel stock on numerous occassions

WEB is still the 2nd most shorted stock on the market at the moment as shown here

WEB - Short Sellers and Share Price side by side

Taking a look at the patterns of Shorts v Price throughout 2020 and into 2021, it's fair IMO to assume that most of the short sellers are underwater by around 50% (refer to the attachment)

When you take a look at May through Oct 2020 when Short Positions were being acumulated from less than 5% up to the 17.5%, the short sellers at best got set at $4 / share.

Then in comparison the period of Aug 2020 through Feb 2021 when the short sellers stubbornly held their positions to a total above 15% shorted, the share price went up by $1 / share (25% loss to the early shorters)

Since Feb 2021 when it appears some of the short sellers said enough is enough and started to unwind and total shorts came below the 15% level, the share price has since gone to above $6 / share and those shorters still holding are now underwater $2 /share (or 50%)

There are still up to 40 million shares short sold and the avg daily traded volume of WEB shares as an eyeball estimate is say 4m shares per day.

10 trading days where 100% of trades are short sellers covering their losses for them all to close out ???  Unlikley, probably more like 30 days at best if they all take their medicine with a sense of urgency, but they cant really because the sell side is pretty thin in market depth with only 871K shares on offer.

Even if this is large funds insulating their holdings against further downward movments, what is playing out is that they are infact limiting fund gains by their hedge losses going against the share price gains at a 1 for 1 ratio.

Very interesting and maybe less about fundementals in the short term, by which time travel restrictions and international travel bubbles may have been put in place.

And all of this alongside nearly every panelist on Ausbiz saying that WEB is the preferred travel holding at the moment (I beleive even this week's The Call during the FLT review that sentiment was again yet aired)

WEB - Price Action above $6, Short Sellers still holding open positions

With the price action now nudging $6.20 and the Short Selling data showing there were still 40 million shorted shares as of the 4th of March (the latest available data here)

The total traded volume since the 5th of March being 15 million shares plus today's trade of currently 3.5 million shares, there is AT LEAST still 20 million shorted shares out there if you use the very unrealistic assumption that every share transacted since the 5th of March was a short seller closing their position.

There is a very good case for WEB to run higher and be supported by the nervous short sellers needing to close out.

The trend of the Short Positions graphs is showing the inverse of the WEB share price itself, so I'm concluding that the shorts have been chipping away at closing out, but when will they decide to run for the exit ??

All of this is just my opinion, so DYOR

WEB - Price Action and Short sellers

24th Feb 2021

some interesting insight this morning on Ausbiz by Mathan Somasundaram from Deep Data Analytics on the WEB share price and the large amount of short positions.

The basic message being that with so many short positions, when the time comes that the Shorters are feeling pressured it will take months to close those out in amongst avg daily trade.

Basically WEB just have to come out and match their performance numbers (or better) and in the absence of negative sentiment it should see the price continuing to drift up.

So I guess if you take a positive view on the re-configured WEB operations being ready to pounce when things start to ramp back up, there's this angle to the share price support too.

WEB shorts

Of course if the shorters all rush tto the market at once, we'll see a single day price run like BUB experienced recently and the data showed that to be a close out situation.

WEB - Price Action trying to nudge past the $5.20 resistance

I guess the positive feel with the commencement of the COVID vaccines rolling out is transferring into WEB's price of late