just an fyi- i mentioned below that IB (Interactive Brokers) did not have any shares of the social media stock etf, SOCL, available to short but that was only briefly following when FB started trading. as i mentioned, IB has about the best availability of issues available to short amongst all the brokers and they also have a very convenient feature available on their TWS trading platform. you can add a “Shortable” field to the screen which is color coded to show the availability, or lack-thereof, of shares of stock available for shorting. for example, two of the stocks on my screen, FB (just watching) and PEET (an active short) show dark green bars, which mean that they currently don’t have any shares for you to short but they might be able to locate them for you or they may become available soon. i could still enter an order to add to my PEET short if i wanted, and IB would hold the order until they find the shares (or it wouldn’t execute if they don’t). you can also call them an request some shares as well.
a light green bar means that they do have shares available to short and a red bar means forget about it… there are not any shares around and they probably can’t find any for you. an excellent tool for both the active trader or even an part-time investor that likes to short stocks or etf’s for either speculation or hedging purposes. it also gives me an idea of when a stock is heavily shorted which comes in handy when i’m looking at a potential short-squeeze, long-side trade (red bar stocks tend to rip on bullish technical breakouts as the shorts get squeezed and scramble to cover) or i may decide to book early profits on a red-barred short position as i figure that i might be in a crowded trade at that point and don’t want to get stuck holding the bag (last guy to cover).