My understanding of short selling is that a shorter cannot lower the price - all they can do is make it harder for the price to increase by having a sell order at a price higher than the current price.
For the price to go higher, long holders need to purchase all these short 'sells' in order to push it to the next price point in the queue.
Of course once this upward boundary is breached (ie more recent purchasers than sellers), and the price starts to increment, then the short sellers will cover their positions by buying shares on-market (they don't want to make a loss), thus accelerating the upward push.
Am I missing something?
Tdl
MRE Price at posting:
69.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held