I was able to short stock FOO in my real account–why can I short it on Marketocracy?
When you go to short a stock, the broker does the following: 1. They look in their local accounts and give you those shares if available. 2. If not, they try to borrow the shares from other brokerages. Institutional funds and hedge funds typically have access only to the shares that brokerages are willing to lend to external accounts. Shares traded internally within the brokerage are not available to external funds, such as Marketocracy. As a result, members can sometimes short stocks in their real life accounts that are not available in the Marketocracy system. The number of shares that brokerages are willing to lend to external accounts is listed in a file (called the “StockBorrow” file) that Marketocracy receives at 8:00 p.m. each trading day. Marketocracy fills tickets up to 20% of the total available short volume as listed in the StockBorrow file. For example, if the StockBorrow file says that there are 1000 shares of stock FOO available to short, only 200 of those shares will be
