I get on the phone, or im the ops guy in the office and say "I need 5000 MBI, can you get a locate?" He calls around to locate the shares for me and a few minutes later he says "you're good". I don't know if it costs them or not, but it doesn't cost me anything.
for anyone whose broker clears with Penson, I'm wondering how is Penson as far as finding shares to short?
I usually look for the low volume, high spread symbols... if you want high volume, low spread, try the London Exchange... the big names like brittish petroleum and vodaphone move several hundred million shares per day