Petronas Chemicals short-seller Carnage 8 days apart!

 On 9th March, the seller of petroleum distillates' stock opened 51 ticks above Friday's strong close & then mowed down the sellers in frantic trading up to 62 ticks above that $4.80 open, causing massive grief to shorties of over two million shares brought over from the previous week, allowing me to exit from $4.99 to as high as $5.31 within the first 5 minutes of trading before the price deflated down to $4.55 by lunch break & then cascaded to as low as $4 before closing at $4.12.

I did not monitor the stock's short positions after that, but noticed that it plummeted to as low as $3.61 the very next day, perhaps allowing shorties to recoup some of their massive losses [ since the average short-sold price was below $4.10 ]. However, due to the escalating hostilities, the stock recovered swiftly in 4 of the next 5 days, vaulting 37% to close at $4.95 today. The 3.5% correction yesterday likely lured many to try shorting again & throughout the afternoon, I monitored the mounting IDSS short positions, which exceeded $1 million by 3pm & escalated to $2.015 million, averaging at $4.759 before the aggressors prudently halted their sales.  As I predicted, the price closed just off the intraday peak of $4.96 despite over 1 million shares parked at $4.95 to sell as buyers desperate to close their short positions by buying at ever higher bids crystallized their losses, reminiscent perhaps of the Nintendo shorties over in Japan chasing the latter up 1,440 yen higher than the closing just before the Middle East war commenced!

Such are the pitfalls of overconfidence in the thesis that a highly liquid large cap, relatively expensive  & incurring big losses in the past few quarters will naturally fall after rising a massive 26% in one day [ March 6th ]. If timing is not on the shorties' side, it can be pretty  painful...

Petronas Chemicals oversaw a paper loss that was as large as $2,414.50, or -44%, at its April 9th '25 low of $2.75. However, due to the Iran war, I managed to squeeze out of 56.7% of my highest position ever in the stock with a narrow $77.93 gain boosted by a $194.12 'contra' gain on 128 shares fortuitously added the day before the dividend went ex-, after collecting $271.60 in dividends in the last 3 years subsequent to exiting completely in April 2021. The red ink amounting to several hundred ringgit of the last 8 days has turned to $19.48 in the black before commissions & I intend to exit close to the best possible prices during the remaining days of the week!