Help me understand short ratios

Days to cover are calculated by taking the number of currently shorted shares and dividing that amount by the average daily trading volume for the company in question.

It can help with determining how much pressure will be put on shorts if the price starts moving up. The days to cover represent the total estimated amount of time for all short sellers to buy back the shares that were lent to them by a brokerage.

.8 suggests an 8/10 ratio. short interest (8) divided by daily volume (10).

Still trying to understand how shorts lower the price

Found this, not shorts but manipulation

Spoofing The Tape

Spoofing, also known as layering, the tape is when sophisticated short-term investors place orders in the market with no intention of having them filled. Other investors see the large orders waiting to be executed, believing that a market whale is trying to buy or sell at a certain price. Therefore, the investor places their order at the same level to buy or sell.

Seconds before the market trades at the price of the large order, the order is pulled from the market, and the retail investor's order is filled. After the spoofer pulls the order, the market drops, resulting in losses for anyone unfortunate enough to be tricked into buying.

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So 0.8 would be a high amount of shorted stock vs the amount of shares traded daily ?

ince I have no experience with understanding this, ... can you interpret this for me ?

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I suppose it is relative but I do not consider that to be high. Usually a high days-to-cover ratio might be an indication that there are likely problems with company performance. If 2 million shares are short for a stock with a 1 million daily volume average then the short ratio is 2, which is significantly higher than the .8 in your scenario.

Also keep in mind a short interest tracker is only reported to investors every two weeks. Because of this, it is possible the data may already be somewhat outdated by the time you read about it.

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Spoofing The Tape

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If you really want to see how effective that can be, check out the story of Navinder Singh Sarao who was deemed to be most responsible for the massive flash crash in 2010. It's as crazy a story as you can imagine. Dude did it from his bedroom in his parents house in a poor neighborhood of London. Here's a good 25 min video on it:

The Wild $50M Ride of the Flash Crash Trader Youtube