It can be very frustrating not to be able to execute short sale orders especially when you know the stock is going down a lot soon. As a result, your trading results and performance becomes much worse than if short sales could be easily executed. Too often, I get this "no shares available" even though I only pick stocks that trade millions of shares a day, certainly no less than 1 million shares a day on the day I want to short it. I am looking for a broker that allows customers to sell short with few restrictions. Firms that are often unable to take sell short orders due to "unable to borrow shares" are highly undesirable obviously. For the bears here, which are you favorite brokers for your short sales? The last thing I need is after having narrowed down to several stocks I want to short, that the broker claims no shares available. I suppose the better ones (i.e. more likely to have shares to lend, fewer restrictions) are IB and Lightspeed? If so, which one is more often able to find shares and allow you to short? I like to be able to short stocks that are much below $5, e.g. 2ish or even 1ish when necessary. Any broker good for that? Thanks in advance.
Thanks Abattia, quite a helpful link you gave. After reading the link, it appears: IB is perhaps top choice for borrowing shares for short sales. But has anyone compared IB with LightSpeed on this short sale share availability issue? Also, someone mentioned brokers that use multiple clearing firms. Can anyone name such a firm(s)?
I'm familiar with both brokers and my personal experience is that IB often have more shares available. Keep in mind that i've never shorted a stock that traded at $1 or lower. Good luck.