Who borrows for 1 day unless you're involved in Pelosi level insider trading? I specifically stated the term of the loan because that's what we need to convert to so we can figure profit or loss. Says who? How can you be sure any one particular day will be the day a stock drops like a rock? Tomkat says that there are traders who claim they are making money while paying exorbitant borrow rates, but he wouldn't name a single one. Can you? I would argue that if borrowing costs are so high, the bad news is already out. You're not going to see super high borrowing costs with a corresponding demand to borrow.
Day traders i do on a good day. On a bad day, I lose money while paying exorbitant costs as well, so try not to do that. you’ve got that backwards. The demand to borrow is very high, which is what drives up the borrowing cost. Sometimes weird small stocks like some preferreds you might know (OCCIN, GECCZ, GSL-B, etc) have 100% borrow costs just because they’re income securities and mostly not held in margin accounts so not available to lend. In those cases, the rate is high due to scarcity but essentially no one pays that rate. Look at RILY currently. It’s a battleground stock with shorts saying it’s worthless, under sec investigation, bad loans, fraud by FRG CEO possibly together with Mr Riley, etc. they’re paying 75% annualized to bet its going to zero. I think that’s wrong, but it went from $50 to $5 so mostly they were right on the stock direction which is what matters.
I just got my IB statement: There were two pages of loans. This is the very end. So yes there is real $ to be had if you have the stocks they need. The page shows a list of the ones I have and they loaned. They did not touch HOOD nor SBUX.
Anything AI related for a long term hold, (and smallish float?), is a good choice. For TEM I am sitting on about 6.7% return, so that is the "dividend" you opt in for. I should consider buying more with the returns.