The All Ordinaries Index (ASX: XAO) is taking a bit of a beating so far this Thursday. At the time of writing, the All Ords is down by 0.73% at 7,681 points. But one All Ords share is defying this general market sentiment, and decisively so. That would be the Vulcan Energy Resources Ltd (ASX: VUL) share price.
Vulcan Energy shares are currently up a very pleasing 5.76% so far today at $10.84 a share. That's a meaningful outperformance of the broader market.
So what's causing Vulcan shares to rocket higher this Thursday?
Well, it's not entirely clear. This lithium developer hasn't released any major news or announcements today so far.
But we still might be able to dig a little deeper and guess what's going on today.
What's pushing up the Vulcan share price today?
Yesterday, we did get some news from Vulcan. That came in the form of an announcement the company has inked an agreement with Rhein Petroleum to purchase 3D seismic and drilling data.
As we covered yesterday, this agreement will help the company "understand the sub-surface" of the 315 square kilometres that this 3D data covers.
This was arguably not bad news for Vulcan. But, even so, yesterday saw the Vulcan share price lose a nasty 6.8% or so. My Fool colleague James posited this might have been the results of the announcement being "overshadowed by its ongoing short-seller attack and broad weakness in the lithium sector [yesterday]".
Vulcan has indeed been struggling with short-seller attacks, most prominently that from J Capital that was published back in October.
With ASX lithium shares back in the hot seat today — we've seen gains from Pilbara Minerals Ltd (ASX: PLS) and Orocobre Limited (ASX: ORE) — perhaps investors have finally turned their attention to what Vulcan had to say yesterday and decided it was worth piling in today.
Whatever the reason, it would be a welcome change for Vulcan investors. Although Vulcan remains up a pleasing 291% year to date in 2021, it is down around 27% since 26 October.
At today's Vulcan Energy share price, this company has a market capitalisation of $1.26 billion.
