Don't be salty, you made a great trade. Pat on the back!
Serious question: do you actually think the squeeze thesis is any good on a fundamental basis? Because this seems a bit like a 'Burford-trade' in reverse: generate a lot of hype (in this case about a short squeeze in a stock with a very low float) and the desired result will follow, regardless of the fundamentals. But shares are actually down today and the borrow fee is also down since August. I thought the 'mox-report' wasn't very convincing and in fact it looks pretty much like something Muddywaters could have written. Also, the DDS super squeeze story has been around for years - looks like people are starting to anticipate / expect it.
Not that there is anything wrong with making money because of people hyping a possible short squeeze rather than an actual short squeeze occurring. I made some money on the short side in Burford as well despite having no strong view on fundamentals.
I agree with you that DDS is an interesting stock on multiple levels.
I don't really think they have much in common. MW on Burford was basically loud screaming of things people already knew, egregious misrepresentation, and capitalizing on reputational impact in order to more or less move the market. Mox report was pretty straight forward. Its a math trade. DDS as a retailer is kind of crummy, but not the worst out there. To a certain extent, sure; word getting out about short interest and the stock getting squeezed is a bit of self fulfilling prophecy. But its also a play on understanding market psychology. Ive been on the wrong end of short squeezes before; knowing what that feels like helps understand what drives this(it still may get squeezed more btw). So on that front, Pearson was 100% clear what he was looking to do here and I thought represented things in a fairly straight forward manner. Whereas Muddy Waters on the other hand...
The home run scenario, again just analyzing the math end of this trade, would have been a repurchase number around what Unemon suggested. Free float is now significantly below shares short. Which then points to the obvious fact that some holders of the stock, that arent part of the free float are lending out the stock. Which if that's the case, you better believe once it is public what the difference between short interest and float is, guess what those holders are doing? Pulling the borrow. Thats where the really fireworks would happen.
EDIT: and btw, if you want to see a real short piece. Check out Pearson's Forcefield Energy writeup. Or just check the FNRG chart. Gives new meaning to the term "killing it".