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Technology Stocks : Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fut_trade who wrote (9199)	4/7/1998 3:21:00 PM
From: RDH	Respond to of 27307

<<<<called up schwab today to see if they had any shares available to short. Nope!>> <<just checked with E*TRADE, and there is no problem shorting YHOO>>>> Doesn't this have a lot to do with whether the brokerage firm is allowing people to margin a particular security (and to what extent). I expect firms like Fidelity and Schwab are pretty conservative and may be pretty strict on the margin requirements for YHOO. However, e-trade is a little easier going. For example Fidelity has a 50% percent margin requirement on Informix stock, while e-trade has only a 30% margin requirement. So, I moved all of my Informix from Fidelity to e-trade. If I owned YHOO on margin (which would be way too risky for me, personally) and my broker raised the margin requirements -- I would probably move it elsewhere. Maybe this is why Schwab doesn't have any YHOO available to short -- their margin requirement for it is high -- so not many people have bought in on margin and some of those that have may have moved it over to another brokerage firm rather than come up with money for a margin call. I don't know how much of YHOO has been bought on margin -- but if it is significant look for the price to fall quickly if and when it falls. - RDH.