Yeah, it's probably not us little guys. Prop firms or perhaps Centerpoint but since it cost 50k minimum to open an account that isn't an option for me. You can try to locate in the early pre and see if any is available. The disadvantage is you don't know if it's a great short setup until later in the day.
Centerpoint has lowered their bar - now you can open an acct with $10k. You really need to have TTS & 475 MTM if you plan on going gang busters shorting the HTB nano cap stocks - otherwise the shorting fees will kill you.
Just to elaborate if anyone didn’t understand the above comment, you want to be sure you can take a tax deduction for the very high costs involved in shorting Hard To Borrow stocks. For example you could make money trading, say paying $10k in fees to make $15k in profits. So far so good, but then you could lose money if you then had to pay taxes on the $15k of gross profits rather than on the $5k net profit. Taxes at 50% on $15k would leave you with net $7.5k in after tax profits and $10k of expenses - a net $2.5k loss for your troubles and hard work. Taxes at 33% means you only breakeven.