Marginal Utility

Normally, I’m not an advocate of active trading. But don’t Fannie and Freddie seem like obvious candidates for shorting?

BTW, love that somebody added “Minimization” as a thread category.

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Beefcake said on August 28, 2009 at 9:51 am
Just tried to short these two stocks on Schwab. Here’s the message I got:

This stock is either ineligible to be shorted or shares must be borrowed externally. Lenders of hard-to-borrow securities charge a fee in the form of interest. Clients who wish to short a minimum of $100,000 of a hard-to-borrow security and are willing to pay a fee to cover the cost of borrowing those shares, may contact Securities Lending at 800-355-2448 to determine the fee amount.

The evidence suggests that even after paying shorting fees, hard-to-short stocks are profitable to short. But I certainly don’t want take on a $100,000 position!