Very interesting Hog. It seems people on this chat line were told different things by their brokers. The thing is, we still do not have what I would call concrete answers about the "cans" and "cannots " of lending shares for shorting in our accounts. It seems every broker has a different story and that they try to avoid giving you the real verdict. Even if you take receipt of the actual certificates, these shares are showing in your account and I cant see why they couldn,t lend them out based on that electronic statement. I beleive if you own share certificates, that it can take up to 30 days to sell. If this is the case, wouldn,t a broker loan these shares where he has a good idea he will have lots of time to cover?

Its starting to appear to me that rules are pretty vague when it comes to brokers lending our shares. And where everything is done electronically today, I see lots of loop holes.

No wonder we have asked in the past when there has been selling, "where are all the shares coming from". We may have thought our 100k or so were safe, we see them sitting in our account in front of our face, yet the whole time they could be loaned out and sold, actually putting more shares on the market that shouldn,t be there.