I make a living entirely by shorting. There are a small number of stocks that my broker (Etrade) doesn't always have available to short and in those cases I have my husband short them thru IB.
The interest rate to borrow stocks like ebay and goog for shorting them jumped 1% overnight at IB from almost 0% to more than 1%. Does anyone have a possible explanation of why it happened?
The bid is the highest offer to buy shares. He doesn't have the shares. He wants the shares. In order to sell short to him, you need to borrow the shares. It's illegal to do so unless you borrow the shares (naked shorting).