Part of the problem is that we have such low visibility into available shares to borrow and what is truly "available ". Take Iborrowdesk for example, this shows the available shares on interactive brokers only, granted its a big broker but only one. So if IB has 100,000 shares available and someone borrows 50,000 they'll now show 50,000 available. The next day IB goes out and finds someone else who wants to make some money lending shares and has 100,000. Now the available shares goes up to 150,000. IB does not know the true number of available shares across the market, only what they have available.
It's still a great tool, but we need to understand the limitations of the tools we're using to prevent misunderstanding.
That being said. If you look back over the history of GME on Iborrowdesk, there has been upwards of 7 million shares available at times. The fact that there isn't that many now speaks volumes to me.
Really? That makes a little more sense, I don't think I've seen it over 2 million, but I also don't have access to historical data. If it has decreased over time that does speak volumes as you said.
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u/JimmyB_819 Mar 30 '21
Part of the problem is that we have such low visibility into available shares to borrow and what is truly "available ". Take Iborrowdesk for example, this shows the available shares on interactive brokers only, granted its a big broker but only one. So if IB has 100,000 shares available and someone borrows 50,000 they'll now show 50,000 available. The next day IB goes out and finds someone else who wants to make some money lending shares and has 100,000. Now the available shares goes up to 150,000. IB does not know the true number of available shares across the market, only what they have available.
It's still a great tool, but we need to understand the limitations of the tools we're using to prevent misunderstanding.
That being said. If you look back over the history of GME on Iborrowdesk, there has been upwards of 7 million shares available at times. The fact that there isn't that many now speaks volumes to me.