Hello, Whenever I place Hard-to-Borrow stocks short orders and those shares can't immediately be located, it generally takes a few hours before they become available. - Is there a trick to make IB aware of my will to short those shares at the open or in the hour after ,by for example, letting short orders in locate mode during the night? - In the morning, I generally receive emails from IB where they tell me they have been able to locate the shares I was attempting to short the previous day but when I try to effectively short at the open or just after, they are not available anymore. What is the problem? -I rarely follow up when stocks become available( because there is no opportunity anymore ), will I be flagged by IB auto locate algorithm ? Thanks a lot.
Why would you be flagged? The opportunity is gone and you have no obligation to borrow. The shares for the best shorts are usually never available for that brief period when the trade is good. They become available when the trade would be done, usually. I'm not aware of any tricks, maybe others can enlighten us.
I found this in an old thread( which I can't find anymore... ). Apparently IB tries to locate unavailable shares depending on the( short ) demand for a certain stock but also based on the client habit of effectively shorting the stock once IB has located it. It is not a "punitive" flag. Apparently the actual activity of locating HTB inventory between brokers is still done "manually" by phone so they try to concentrate their efforts on accounts who might actually get short the stocks once located.