When investing in individual stocks, check its borrow rate for short selling. If it’s higher than say 0.5%, that means short sellers are willing to pay a significant amount to borrow the stock in order to short it, so you might want to think twice about buying the stock in case they know something you don’t. If you still want to invest in it, consider using a broker that has a fully paid lending program to capture part of the borrow fees from short sellers, or writing in-the-money puts on the stock instead of buying the common shares. (I believe the latter tends to net you more of the borrow fees, in the form of extra extrinsic value on the puts.)
When investing in individual stocks, check its borrow rate for short selling. If it’s higher than say 0.5%, that means short sellers are willing to pay a significant amount to borrow the stock in order to short it, so you might want to think twice about buying the stock in case they know something you don’t. If you still want to invest in it, consider using a broker that has a fully paid lending program to capture part of the borrow fees from short sellers, or writing in-the-money puts on the stock instead of buying the common shares. (I believe the latter tends to net you more of the borrow fees, in the form of extra extrinsic value on the puts.)
What is it that guarantees that whoever borrows the stock does so in order to short it? Couldn’t they just be borrowing it to go further long?