RE:Fight Back Against ShortersFound an anwer that makes sense on quora fwiw
Link to original post on quora This is completely untrue. As others mentioned, you must request a certificate of your stock in order to be in possession and keep them from being borrowed. Most brokers do not do this because the make a percentage for the transaction. Otherwise, with a fully funded account you can collect these interest rates/rebates yourself. Your broker is the holder of your position and reserves the right to loan your shares at any given time. This is written in your brokerage agreement and if not readily available you can give them a call.
Setting a high limit order gives the clearing firm or third party that your broker may or may be under contract with the ability to see where your position will possibly be sold and gives them the opportunity to continually sell and buy back, some times hundreds of times in a matter of minutes, your position. With high frequency trading this often happens from algorithms or a “black box”.
Furthermore, there are plenty of contractors and promoters working the chat rooms and forums telling people falsely that if they set high limit orders they will protect their positions. But actually, they are misleading them in order to scope their possible exits for the reasons previously mentioned and put selling pressure on the order book.
Many argue that these practices are a conflict of interest and rightfully so. Beware people on reputable sites like this that carelessly give you false information because they may have different motives than “trying to help”, especially if they think it doesn’t affect your position. When brokers negligently loan out shares that aren’t available, it can cause a “short squeeze” that could send a Security to extreme highs (DRYS 2016).