Hi Babak, This could be quite big problem. Possible solutions are: 1. Open another account with another retail broker. 2. Start trading with prop' firm. Which solution is better? Or is there any other better? Lojze
That's great to hear. In the past, I got the impression that the short list was what it was, and there was no real procedure in place to accommodate new short requests. Just out of curiosity, do IB (or other firms) still have to handle short requests for stocks that are not on either the hard or easy list by manually calling around, or is there some sort of clearinghouse where firms publish their borrowable positions automatically now? Or is this where the easy list comes from? I have a separate issue that I may have written about recently. Sometimes intraday, I'll get a "not available to short" message for a stock that I was just able to place an order to short a couple seconds prior. This occurs outside regular trading hours, in stocks that are not trading at all between the time they were shortable and the time they were not. I've seen it happen with stocks that are on the shortable list, as well as stocks that aren't. Examples that come to mind from today were MSO, SAP, GLG, and GG. When I'm sure the stock did not trade, I'm confused as to how the shortability of it could vary, even if it were right at the share limit. Even assuming that active but unfilled orders were deducted from the shares available, I know that I've seen instances where I was sure that the order book had not changed. That's pretty easy in some of these stocks, when there only a couple orders on the ECNs. FWIW, IB has one of the better short lists, at least for listed stocks, in my experience, including some really bizarre, illiquid stuff.