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Online Share Trading

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CFD shorts

Reply
leoridge
Contributor
What determines whether OST offers shorts or not,list seems to be shrinking,eg MRP huge liquidity but no shorting ?
5 REPLIES 5
koos2
Super Contributor
go on , be a hero, you know you want it.
SimonPB
Valued Contributor
whether they can borrow stock to short sell for you
Russ
Super Contributor
And what causes a shortage of stock to borrow? Does it happen when there are a lot of short sellers?
SimonPB
Valued Contributor
yes, or just people exiting generally, than they want the stock to sell it
Vypir
Contributor
Depends on the institution, but to short you need to have stock in hand (to sell) and to have stock in hand you have to either (a) own it or (b) borrow it from someone - typically clients who are long on the particular stock. Since the market is not quite positive at the moment nobody (neither the institution nor their clients) want to be long in it - this means that the amount of stock available for selling (shorting) has shrunk - and therefore shorting has to be suspended on those stocks...