It depends on what brokerage you are using, but generally, you would get in contact with the respective ‘trade desk’ of your brokerage and inquire about ‘locating hart to borrow securities”. It would be best to know first what security you are looking for and how many shares you would like if they can find them, before you call. If you are really in need, sometimes you can get ahold of investment banks, as Tim has detailed before about his trading, but the costs are very extreme for most small retail traders…Ultimatlely, it’s up to you though…

It depends on what brokerage you are using, but generally, you would get in contact with the respective ‘trade desk’ of your brokerage and inquire about ‘locating hart to borrow securities”. It would be best to know first what security you are looking for and how many shares you would like if they can find them, before you call. If you are really in need, sometimes you can get ahold of investment banks, as Tim has detailed before about his trading, but the costs are very extreme for most small retail traders…Ultimatlely, it’s up to you though…

PCN360- every brokerage house is different in terms of what they can and cannot get for clients on a daily basis. In some cases, there are days when I can get threshold/hard to borrow shares from one brokerage and not from another. Also, brokerages that focus on professional traders and or institutional traders as their main clients, usually have access to a greater amount of hard to borrow securities. These would be places like Trade Station, Think or Swim, IB’s. Many if not all “pennystocks” have an extremely “low float” or total number of shares available/traded at any one time, which is one of the reasons for the volatile price action. Yet, this also means that once a particular security has become desirable on one end of the trade, such as PDO/MXC on the short side (every one sees they are tanking and wants to get in), these shares are quickly gobbled up by traders which leaves nothing available when someone wants to, as you say, “just come in with a short order”. You must be early to the party, so reserve these shares for later use. You do not need to always reserve shares though, sometimes you get lucky.

PCN360- every brokerage house is different in terms of what they can and cannot get for clients on a daily basis. In some cases, there are days when I can get threshold/hard to borrow shares from one brokerage and not from another. Also, brokerages that focus on professional traders and or institutional traders as their main clients, usually have access to a greater amount of hard to borrow securities. These would be places like Trade Station, Think or Swim, IB’s. Many if not all “pennystocks” have an extremely “low float” or total number of shares available/traded at any one time, which is one of the reasons for the volatile price action. Yet, this also means that once a particular security has become desirable on one end of the trade, such as PDO/MXC on the short side (every one sees they are tanking and wants to get in), these shares are quickly gobbled up by traders which leaves nothing available when someone wants to, as you say, “just come in with a short order”. You must be early to the party, so reserve these shares for later use. You do not need to always reserve shares though, sometimes you get lucky.

http://greenonthescreen.blogspot.com/2008/05/hi-everyone-sinocheck-it-out.html

http://greenonthescreen.blogspot.com/2008/05/hi-everyone-sinocheck-it-out.html