Hey Everyone,
Given yesterday’s fiasco regarding the different SI %'s being reported as a “glitch”, I found TDAmeritrade’s response very interesting.
As per TD Ameritrade’s official Twitter:
“We apologize for the confusion! Given the numbers from our “fundamentals” page, 96.7MM “Short Interest” / 514M “shares outstanding” = 18.83% of float. Our technical support is working with our vendors to verify this information. We thank you for your patience! ^JD”
At first glance, I thought nothing of this tweet considering it being uniform to everything we know about how short interest is reported. However, my favorite document to review (REGSHO) states a few interesting things regarding how short positions are opened…
As per the SEC’s RegSHO Final Amendments (pg.50):
“…we recognize the ability to obtain a short position through the use of derivative products such as options, futures, contracts for differences, warrants, CDS or other swaps (so-called “synthetic short sales”) or other instruments (such as inverse leveraged exchange-traded funds)…”
Purely me thinking aloud, but given the fact that, as defined by TD, short interest is merely a calculation of “shares shorted” / “shares outstanding”, how does this factor in short positions obtained through the other methods that the SEC itself has said are available?
I am curious what the short interest would be if it accounted for “shares shorted” in addition to the other methods available (also think about how much $$ is in derivatives versus traditional equity markets…)
If anyone has any additional information or input please feel free to share/comment/add!
Sources
Reg Sho: https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2010/34-61595.pdf
TD’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/TDAmeritrade/status/1476254731030999045?s=20