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Non-Tech : CYBERTRADER -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Readyman who wrote (2323)	4/11/1999 12:45:00 AM
From: William W. Dwyer, Jr.	Respond to of 3216

Readyman, I believe that if you see your stock listed as "available" to short, you can short it anytime that day, that amount of shares, all day long. From my understanding of how the software is supposed to work, though, if you try to short it and it is "not" available, you won't even be able to. Theoretically, the system won't allow you to short a stock if shares are not available. So, if that's correct, you can try to short the stock and if your order is accepted, you're cool. Sorta. There is, or was at one time, another issue to be very much concerned about. I once shorted a stock and was told several days later that, even though it was over $5 the FED or SEC or someone had declared the stock "unshortable" and, consequently, a strike was put on my account by Penson, the clearing firm. I don't know if they were ever able to modify the software to prevent this. But it's important to know that, because of my experience, you can never ever be really sure a given stock is really shortable. Apparently Penson reserves the right to deny it after the fact. They can issue you a margin call whenever they like, so it seems. I appealed the matter to Penson and they were extremely unreceptive. Beeeeeeeeeee careful. Bill