When a firm has say, 15000 shares short outstanding, they are in a precarious position unless the margin is watched over very closely....if they have more then that they can be in big trouble if the stock runs up, especially if the client decides not to cover the additional margin...many firms have gone under due to these circumstances because the "street" finds out about it and you get the short squeeze going.
According to Raymond James that happened with WCOM - the shorts outstanding was approaching the float
I can't believe they would not let you sell NVLS after buying it, sounds like they entered your long under the wrong type of trade description. As far as the lack of available shorts it sounds like they have made some sort of internal change to their policy.
Maybe Def will research this and get back to us. KLAC is one of my favorites to trade. Maybe it is to put pressure on us to switch to Single Stock Futures. BERT
Maybe the situation is in anticipation of SSFs. Perhaps just to be on the safe side until they see what effect the SSFs have on the individual stocks and the market in general.
This code eliminates certain equities from being shorted, but I checked most of the symbols people posted and it doesn't apply to them. The rule states: UPC 11830 IndicatorâThe Nasdaq Stock Market, in cooperation with the National Securities Clearing Corporation, publishes a daily list of securities restricted under Uniform Practice Code 11830. Under SEC rules, NASD members may be required to close out short sales in Nasdaq securities that meet a certain clearing short position threshold. When applicable, vendors are required to display a special restricted indicator on all real-time quotation displays for individual Nasdaq National Market or Nasdaq SmallCap Market issues.
i try today about 20 stocks from semis-only very few of them avialiable for short...........hmm........
I repeatedly tried to short the Oil Services Holders ETF (OIH) on Oct 15 and 16 but kept getting the message from IB that it wasn't available to short. I've shorted this ETF several hundreds of times in the past 6 months and NEVER once had a problem. If IB isn't restricting the short inventory on purpose, isn't it possible that a lot of these stocks are not available to short because massive amounts of them have already been borrowed by hedge funds who are shorting the hell into the rally?!?
I posted elsewhere but here's more opinion. CLEARLY, something is going on. Margin changes out of the blue with no notice. Shorts yanked away for NO GOOD REASON. No explanation for any of this. def, you listening?