Do bigger online investing sites have more stock available to short then smaller ones?

Question

For example, does ETrade have more stock available to short on most companies then a company like Scottrade?

I ask this because I have been attempting to bet against many companies as of late and many of them don't have lots of stock to short or have none at all. I use Scottrade. Any recommendations to move to if this is fact?

Answer 1

No. No. No. None of these sites "inventory" stock. You are not buying it from the site...they are just facilitating the trade for you...They are all buying and selling it from the exchange itself. There are A LOT of restricted short sales right now. In a down market, we can't all short the same companies. It just can't work that way.  There are some pretty obvious problems out there and we can't ALL bet against them.

So, no...it doesn't really have anything to do with the trading site...

Answer 2

Holly is totally wrong.

Brokers have inventories of stock.  It's the stock that they are holding for their customers who have long positions.  If you want to short, you need to borrow shares.  For normal retain transactions, you broker is loaning them to you from the pile he;s holding for other customers.  So, one broker may run out of shares to loan while another still has some.  A larger broker will have more shares to loan, but probably has more customers who want to short.  

When I have this problem, I buy puts.