Stocks that I've been trading for months at IB are no longer available to short effective last Friday. EBAY,ERTS,JBLU,ROOM,PFCB,PNRA,EXPE all not available! Sound strange?
There must've been some sort of glitch in the system. I've never had problems shorting any of those before either.
I tried shorting ERTS yesterday through Scottrade and it said no shares available "please call blah blah for assistance" How do I find out what stocks are available for shorting, does anyone think scottrade would send me a list of shortable equities if I send them an e-mail? would have made some money on that trade.
I have noticed the same thing, I trade these types of stocks daily and have never had a problem shorting through IB. This last week nothing has been available to short. Besides the stocks you mentioned, NVLS and AMZN were not available yesterday. I ended up selling naked in the money calls on AMZN and EXPE yesterday. Unfortunately this adds quite a bit to my trading costs.
Often times Compliance people ( I used to be one) get very skittish durring a market rally and will start condensing the short availabilty. In addition, if a firm has significant positions long or short in a security they will restrict it.
"Often times Compliance people ( I used to be one) get very skittish durring a market rally and will start condensing the short availabilty. In addition, if a firm has significant positions long or short in a security they will restrict it."
At the risk of sounding paranoid,why would short sales be restricted? I don't believe that there are no shares available to short. Many shorts must have covered in this "squeeze" we've had in the last few days. Is this the PPT at work ?
sick and tired of it......espesially NVLS-did not let me short it today in morning. same error message appears on IB TWS when i try to sell NVLS after i bought it......already call to IB once-nothing... will call again today