Doodlebug, shorts rarely panic. Although shorts do panic once in a while, longs panic far more often. Shorts are very cold and calculating, they don't fall in love with the company, and they don't even hated the company, they just see an opportunity to make money. Longs tend to be the opposite.

I do not think these are naked or run of the mill shorts who just happened to pick the end of the October to go in huge (compared to the usual, virtually non-existant short activity on our stock).