I'm tired of unavailable stocks at IB. There are less than 100 UPC 11830 stocks on the nasdaq, but IB has no availability in more than 500 stocks. Half of the time IB doesn't have shares available in the companies that interest me. Outside of this one issue, I'm happy with IB. Are there any comparable retail brokers out there?
Are you sure those stocks are available elsewhere? Not just on shortable lists, but actually tradeable? Every day, a large number of traders get interested in exactly the same stocks to short because of some news, hype, or technical move that shows up on everyone's scanners. It's not uncommon to find those stocks suddenly hard to borrow because everyone is suddenly in them.
Tradestation shorts are a lot worse. Now IB had KMRT shorts but of course, no one mentions the good ones.
Agreed, shorts at IB have been a problem in the last 10 months. Now a problem with Tradestation, and hitting MB too. Workin' on gettin' back to that sweet short list that Bear Stearns has. Gonna be checking out SWS clearing as well. Def, it's been months since 'IB is in the works of multiple borrowing agreements for shorts'........WHEN? This is really getting to be a priority.
IB is pretty bad when it comes to shortable stocks. I have better luck with Mytrack, but the commish will kill ya
TS as of today had about 3000 stocks on their E2B (easy to borrow) list, while IB had about 5500. TS has gotten IMO worse since they implemented the "change" of removing the HB designation from their stock symbols. Before the "change", TS filled about 75% of my shorts, and after it is less than half. I have accounts with both and find as the numbers bear out that IB is much better at filling shorts than TS. Anyone know of better brokers? DS
I trade primarily thru IB, but maintain multiple accounts thru mass retail brokers like Ameritrade, Etrade, etc., for the sole purpose of a bigger short list. That way if I can't borrow it at one broker, I move onto the next, then the next. I often debate if it's really worth it for a few reasons: 1) the "clunky" systems at the other brokers means it generally takes awhile to get the order thru, 2) keeping over 25k in each acct eats up a fair amt of capital that many times doesn't get used, 3) the "hard to borrow" stocks never seem to go down as far as I think they will so I end up making a less profit than I expected or losing money. Scott
Looks like we are doing ok with our list. In any event we are in the process of negotiating a deal which should further improve the list. Hopefully this will be done by year end.
I look forward to that news. IB has performed well, outside of this issue, in my opinion. But it never ceases to amaze me that the day after I short a few shares of something, I wake up to find that IB no longer has any shares available. This has happened 9 times in 2004 alone. What's more amazing is that these stocks had almost ZERO short interest, and I had only taken a very very small initial position (500-1000 shares). Of the 3455 stocks listed on the Nasdaq, IB has a little under 2700 available to short as of today...78%.