The rise in shorts might well be more to do with the price of gold and Europe than PRB. When you get people on tv talking doomsday , it is usually to help fill their wallets, especially when they are short the markets. As for that 1m+ short ,who bought the shares ? Just think what that would have done to the price on the open market to a thinly traded stock. Can anybody tell if there has been an overall rise in shorts lately for the whole market? That might give you more of a clue to what's going on.

Think of this scenario. If you were a fund that had a lot of shares and thought there was a short term weakness in the market,you could block them out to yourself without killing the price . Then when the price drops ,you could block them back to yourself without driving the price through the roof. Is this able to be done? On paper you would make several hundred thousand for your company and still own the shares if you were a believer in PRB.

Who knows?