Someone mentioned that the short covering was arbitrage, with people shorting the stock over $1 and then purchasing shares from the recent bought deal to cover. That's actually what I thought probably happened to.

But someone else pointed out to me this morning that shares purchased in these bought deals are often locked into place for a period of a couple months before they can be released into the open market. Was this the case with this particular one, or does this more often apply to flow-through shares, or is that irrelevant? Because if they are locked in for any period of time, those shares possibly couldn't be used to cover the short position.