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: on March 12th, the shorties' selling comprised just over 10% of the volume traded of 44.656 million when the price closed at $4.60, up a massive 46 ticks when their sale price averaged aptly at $4.44468[ the previous  day, the 11th, sported even worse figures for the bears:878,700 shares averaging only $3.95837(closing $4.14)]. The next day, Friday 13th, their outstanding sold volume shrunk by nearly half to 2,247,100 averaging $4.698928 & the stock closed at $4.75 after touching $4.80 intraday. On Monday 16th, the same number shrunk by almost two-thirds to 850,100 shares averaging $4.665339 & the price took a breather to close at the day's low of $4.58. However, today, the volume ballooned by more than double to nearly 2 million: 1,982,800 shares averaging $4.77165 with the price closing 18 ticks higher! It'll be interesting to see whether the 1.5 million or so remaining non-IDSS short volume will be able to escape profitably given Brent crude futures rebounded to above $103 after dipping to $100.86 intraday on the continuing war escalation around the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint!

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 [realized profits from '15-'21 = $577.78 + dividends of $159 + at least $500 worth of shareholder doorgifts & meals]. 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!