Emblem Corp - Short interest hits almost 500,000 (EMC.V / EMMBF)

EMC has only been trading for seven calendar days, and the updated figure for short interest is only current up to December 15th 2016, so it includes just four days of trading.  The number current to that date was 483,200 and now with three more days of trading in the books it may very well be higher, and in point of fact I expect that it is higher.  

Regular readers of this miserable and pathetic little blog (I think I might be up to 4 now) know I don't give fundamental data a lot of weight, figuring it to be already 'priced in' to a stock's valuation. The reason is because most fundamental data is typically weeks, and often months old. Short interest on the other hand is much more recent, in this case its only 3 days old.  

Short interest is the one fundamental metric I follow closely because it gets right to the nuts and bolts of the market.  A stock price is determined by the laws of supply and demand, and short sellers artificially increase the available supply by borrowing shares from shareholders and then re-selling them into the market.    

One point I wish to make abundantly clear, short selling is legitimate market activity and I don't view bears as evil or anything of that sort.  Market players can look at a stock and reach the conclusion that, in their opinion, the stock is overvalued.  Expecting the price to fall they can borrow shares from the brokerages of shareholders who have margin accounts and sell them.  The goal is to buy the shares back lower, thus pocketing the difference and booking a gain.  

Longs of course do the opposite, when an investor reaches the determination, in their opinion, that a stock has potential to rise in value, then he or she can purchase shares in the hopes of selling them at some later date for a higher price than what was paid.

Pretty basic stuff.

Naturally it comes down to how many shares are being bought versus how many are being made available for sale, that's what determines the direction of the share price.  And both bulls and bears have the ability to influence the market.  When bulls storm in and buy, if they overwhelm the amount of shares available, then the price rises.  Conversely if bears are making more shares available than buyers are looking to purchase, then the price falls.

Emblem started trading on December 12th, and while market commentators were expecting it to open around $1.50 to $2 per share, instead the level of buy side interest sent the PPS up as high as $3.98 that first day on volume of over 7.3 million shares trading.

Naturally some felt that valuation was inflated, and as should be expected some obviously decided to try and profit by going short.  In just 4 days of trading almost half a million shares were borrowed and sold into the market, and based on the trading its reasonable to expect that most (if not all) of the borrowed shares were sold for more than $3 per.

Now comes the fun part.

As things currently stand short players are sitting on paper gains.  The current PPS is $2.77 and if we assume (pulling a number out of my nether regions) that shorts sold at an average of $3.27 to keep the math easy and rounding up to 500,000 as the short figure....that's a paper gain of $250K.

Not too shabby.

But here's the rub.  In order to turn those paper gains into capital gains short sellers need share holders willing to sell for $2.77 in order for them to cover.  Its the same as a long buying 500,000 of a stock at $2.77 and watching it climb to $3.27.  The long in this case has a paper gain of $250K but he can only turn it into a capital gain if he is able to find buyers willing to pay the higher price.  

Isn't the market fun?

Bears have done well, on paper, but if buying back on the cover causes the PPS to climb its possible that paper gains could turn into paper losses.  Its the same as a long buying a stock at $2.77 and then trying to sell at $3.27, if that selling leads to too much supply and a falling PPS then paper gains could turn into losses.

The thing to understand is that stocks trade on sentiment.  This is important so I'm going to repeat it, stocks trade on sentiment.  A lot of novice retail investors think that there is some magical formula or slide rule to determine whether a stock is under or overvalued.  Good luck with that.  

A lot of investors looked at a company like Tesla and saw its shares trading for $30 or $40 in 2012 and thought it was grossly overvalued.  After all the company was new and had never made a dime in profit, Tesla was bleeding cash to the tune of hundreds of millions per year.  On top of that they were issuing SEC filings saying that their previous filings for earlier years could not be relied upon because of accounting errors.  

Sounds like a short sellers wet dream doesn't it?  Hundreds of millions in losses, dilution on top of dilution, accounting irregularities.  It would be hard to argue with someone presenting the bear case on Tesla back in 2012.  But those fundamental negatives were trumped by bullish sentiment and TSLA took off trading for $100, $200 almost $300 per share in subsequent years.  And now TSLA has finally started to report profits.  Will those profits be enough to sustain the current $200 or so PPS?   That's up to the market to decide, and the primary factor will be sentiment.

But let's get back to Emblem Corp.  Right now its worth $2.77 CDN.  Is that overvalued or undervalued?  

That will depend on market sentiment going forward.  I took out a small long position on the first day of trading, because I saw (and still see) the potential for EMC to attract a lot of buy side interest. I only invested about one third of the capital I had set aside for Emblem however, because I could see it going either way after its incredibly strong opening.  

So far it has moved down from that opening day euphoria, which isn't a shock, but I also saw the potential for increased buy side interest from media mentions and the OTCBB listing, but as of yet that hasn't panned out.  With that being said I am not shying away from my $7 target by April when the Government of Canada is set to announce how its proceeding with the legalization of weed in this country.

Some interesting news has come out as well recently, with the company now authorized to produce Cannabis oils.  Oils derived from Cannabis are said to have a number of positive health benefits, and are an ingredient in some new energy drinks.  I'm invested in one such company and have written about Rocky Mountain High Brand 'Hemp Infused' drinks on here a couple times after opening a position in RMHB at .031 cents USD on the OTCQB.

http://www.avoidthebag.com/2016/10/hemp-infused-beverages-intriguing-idea.html

I am very bullish on EMC as a long term investment, given the management team and the expanding market.  Short term though anything can happen.  If bears continue borrowing shares and selling them the PPS could continue dropping.  

For those concerned with their shares being loaned out there are some things you can do, although personally I don't think it matters much because in my opinion there will still be plenty of shares available in margin accounts.  But shares held in registered accounts for TFSAs and RSPs, those shares are not available to short players.  Additionally putting a sell order in means they can't be loaned out either, although that's something you need to keep an eye on if your intention is to hold for the long term as your PPS could be hit if the stock starts to climb.

Anyway that's enough for now.  Good luck and realize that because of my long position my views are obviously biased.  Verify all information, while I try to ensure the accuracy of what I share I can make no assurances, mistakes can happen.

Cheers