I am planning to short some leveraged ETFs like FAZ, TNA, or TMF etc. I checked IB's shorting costs and they were pretty high, for example FAZ @ARCA had a rebate cost of -4.285% and a fee of 4.375%. TMF had -10.535% and 10.625%, so total cost is more than 20%. Does anyone know if ThinkorSwim has lower costs for borrowing leverage ETFs for shorting? Any other broker has the lowest costs that you know of? Thanks.
I believe that you are misreading this data as the cost to borrow is not the sum of these two figures but rather -4.285% in the case of FAZ and -10.535% in the case of TMF. Note that there are different conventions for presenting stock loan costs depending upon one's country. In the U.S. and Canada it is expressed as a rebate (the borrow fee less the interest earned on the cash collateral posted with the lender to secure the stock loan), which in the case of these hard to borrow securities is negative (i.e., on a net basis, it costs you to borrow). Elsewhere, it's expressed as a fee which, by definition, is not presented as a negative number. In addition, even though that fee is not presented net of the interest earned as it is above, the effective cost to borrow is the same regardless of your country of origin. If you are obtaining this data from the Short Stock (SLB) Availability Tool within Account Management, please refer to the footnotes at the bottom of that screen.
Where to check the historical rebates/costs for shorting a stock (for example, a daily series for the past year)? The SLB only shows the latest snapshot.