RE:HmmmWithout commenting specifically on what has occurred (because there's no way to know 100%), a couple of technical comments:
- shares can be borrowed and not shorted right away. Some brokerages call this a "pre-borrow". So it's possible that shares available could show as zero, but shorting activity still occurs, because someone borrowed the shares a day or two prior and didn't initiate the short sell until later. Some brokers insist loans not sold short are returned after 3 days, others have different rules.
- most services, like Fintel, show a limited data-set, including only data from a sole or a few different brokerages. The service called Ortex is widely assumed to have the most comprehensive data, but even they only account for 85% of brokerage data -- still far more than most, so their short data is considered the most accurate.
- the new data for shares available for shorting (known as "utilization" %) tends to update, depending on the source, around 7:30 am each day, but shares are loaned and returned all day every day. Ortex, as a result, has a live real-time tracking tool that shows the changes throughout the day for the number of shares loaned and the number returned intraday.
- finally, short data, even on Ortex (not counting the intraday live loan data noted above) is what's known as "T2", meaning
trade date plus two days. This refers to the settlement cycle: when you buy a security, your payment must be received by your brokerage firm no later than two business days after the trade is executed. As a result, the updated morning data of utilization and shares on loan is generally referencing the final settlement information from two days prior. Bajaman1 wrote:
On the topic of PYR can someone please explain to me, how when in the last couple of trading days there have been no short shares available, yet fintel shows 71% and 76% of the shares were short trades? Is this a true sign of illegal naked shorting? ....just trying to figure what the heck is going on here...Beachbum.