According to ShortableStocks, some stocks have a fee of 0.25% (i.e. MSFT) while some have a very high fee even higher than 100%. What does a high fee rate to borrow a particular stock could suggest? What does a low free rate to borrow suggests? Thanks
high fee means it’s expensive to borrow the stock. low fee means it’s easy to borrow the stock. why a stock can be high fee is for many reasons.
hmm... I would actually like to know possible reasons that stock could have a high borrow fee rate / low borrow fee rate. Who determines a fee rate? What they are using to determine it? Something more about it. Thanks
Well instead of asking someone else about it next time, you could ummm .... google search for it first perhaps? https://questrade-support.secure.fo...ew/h/Investing/Borrow+rates+for+short+selling
There are some contradicting (in my opinion) articles about this. This article: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4322523-obvious-shorts-highest-borrowing-fee-stocks-in-u-s-market suggests that "But to find stocks that are fundamentally obvious poor investments (to investors willing to do the minimal research), we can simply take the top of the list of stocks that are expensive to short. " This article shows something different: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-stocks-least-30-borrow-141003401.html "Traders going short stocks with borrow fees of 10% or higher need to be extremely careful or plan not to keep the position open for very long. In fact, short sellers should consider avoiding these expensive stocks all together unless they have a good reason to believe there is significant downside ahead in the immediate future." --- I'm guessing it usually means that somebody shorted those stocks but the market suggests now an upward trend is more likely, so the lender is trying to force stop short selling? Side question: If someone lends a stock for shorting, does he pays a variable rate or a fixed rate (based on a stock price)? Or a lender could put lending rate (yearly) one day 0.25% and for another day it's 8% (on a yearly base)?
I think that generally this depends on availability (supply and demand as @sef88 wrote). When lots of people want to short a stock then it's usually because they think the price went too high, and later there aren't enough shares to borrow, so people who own the stock (lenders) can ask whatever %rate they want. Though the %rate seems to be managed by securities lending desks & firms. https://www.google.com/search?q=securities+lending+firms