Newb question; how to shorts shares that are not avail?

[guru]

I see on IB that it notifies you that shares are not avail but may be located...

1) how do you tell IB to locate them?
2) how long does it take?
3) what if by the time they are located you do not want to short it...

i'd certainly appreciate any info on this....or is it not even worth it on IB..

thank you

AFAIK IB does not offer locate service. They will simply wait until someone else gets out of their short positions and frees some shares for others to short. So you’ll get them at random times. At times this can be beneficial, as you can get better/higher price to short at, when other people blow up and have to cover their shorts.

You may need to cancel your order when you no longer want to short the stock.

 

[trendmomentum]

I see on IB that it notifies you that shares are not avail but may be located...

1) how do you tell IB to locate them?
2) how long does it take?
3) what if by the time they are located you do not want to short it...

i'd certainly appreciate any info on this....or is it not even worth it on IB..

thank you

FYI, One way it to simply send a DAY limit order. IB will put the order on hold until some or all shares can be located and release the full or partial order for the located shares at your limit price. In this way you could get some action or none before eod.

Another way is to prelocate first. There is a SBL interface in TWS or on the web site.

 

[klattermusen]

FYI, One way it to simply send a DAY limit order. IB will put the order on hold until some or all shares can be located and release the full or partial order for the located shares at your limit price. In this way you could get some action or none before eod.

Another way is to prelocate first. There is a SBL interface in TWS or on the web site.

it's the prelocate that i'm having an issue with..thanks i'll up the hunt.

 

[murray t turtle]

FYI, One way it to simply send a DAY limit order. IB will put the order on hold until some or all shares can be located and release the full or partial order for the located shares at your limit price. In this way you could get some action or none before eod.

%%
That could work well;
unless there is too much covering shorts./LOL Actually hard to borrow can be a good thing. I found SDS hard to borrow/not that i blame any broker for that; i consider any leveraged ETF hard to borrow\even if i am just buying it.
IF that makes no sense why i would call buying SDS, hard for me to borrow\ then look @ some tech etfs/LOL.
I thought the chart services were lying/bad data the first time i saw an inverse ETF ''paying dividends'' but turned out i was wrong on that.

 

[T441]

I’m also with IB experiencing the same frustration, but have worked out something that works on occasion. In premarket research I always note if a stock is not sortable, and then find a stock that is and has some correlation. EG: RIOT and MARA both crypto plays. RIOT not usually available with IB, MARA usually is. Not going to work every time but worth considering.

 

[d08]

When I used to be a broker, one of our jobs was to get stocks to short for our clients if they wanted it. So you need to use a different broker if you want to find stocks to short. IB is a low end broker that have automated everything.

That does not appear to be the case. Some time ago I was chatting with IB CS and he told me they're working hard on locates of a recent IPO at the time. So they're unlike to have "automated everything", not that it's bad thing to automate everything. Likely they have live monitoring of what is in demand and what is HTB.

 

[d08]

It's just weird IB's whole "we'll try to locate shares for you" but no actual method describing what needs to be done to initiate the process.

It's not a "process". You send the order and they see that you're trying to short something that isn't available. They won't talk on the phone for your measly size.

 

[def]

Trendmomentum is correct. We do actively seek locates when not available within our inventory. For US stocks, all you need to do is place an order and it triggers alerts to the SLB team who will try to locate depending on order size, perhaps quality of the client (ie. if you have a habit of placing orders and never trading or vice versa), and other factors. For markets like HK, if we go to the street it is costly as there may be required minimums so we require requests to go through our professional services team as the size ($100K+) and commitment needs to be real.

 

[klattermusen]

Trendmomentum is correct. We do actively seek locates when not available within our inventory. For US stocks, all you need to do is place an order and it triggers alerts to the SLB team who will try to locate depending on order size, perhaps quality of the client l.

the problem with that is the reason for the short in the first place may disappear by the time you fill the order. Do you get a message saying the order was found - do you still want to short? Or do you just fill it. How are you notified for the fill? A lot of these stocks are very fast moving.

 

[guru]

Saying that IB provides some type of locate service doesn't make a difference when the end result is the same as IB didn't offer a locate service, at least in terms of the process. My short orders simply get filled at random, without any way of telling whether some locate service was used or not, and I didn't submit a locate request.
It does help that IB does some locate efforts in the background, especially for "better quality" accounts, but we don't know when/if that happened when an order is filled. It just happens invisibly and differently than at brokers that specifically provide locate services.
@def please prove me if I'm wrong by posting a link or screenshot to IB locate service where someone can specifically request locates, prioritize it, and get back the status of their request..