Quote:Putting your shares for sale at 3/4$ now and good till cancel order, -supposedly the M M cannot borrow them to short them.
I started researching this a few weeks ago to see what was true and what wasn't, -but so far I have only talked with Etrade. At some point in the future I’m planning on calling other brokers (Fidelity, Schwab, TD, etc.) to ask them the same questions.
4/20/18. Here is what I found out: Etrade’s response to my question about putting high PPS GTC (good till cancelled) limit orders on penny stocks (to prevent shorting).
1) Stocks in cash accounts can never be shorted (by any broker). So setting a high limit GTC order in a cash account means nothing, because they can't be shorted anyway.
2) Stocks in margin accounts can be borrowed and shorted by your broker or loaned to others for shorting. Your consent for this is detailed in the form you signed and agreed to for your margin account.
With margin accounts, usually Etrade’s policy is: if you don’t borrow money from them (on margin), they usually don’t borrow your stocks to short. If you do borrow money from them on margin, they may, in turn, borrow your stocks to short. But, of course, they can borrow your shares anytime for shorting if they want to (because you agreed to it).
3) Etrade doesn’t short anything with a PPS under $1, so for any stock with a PPS under $1 they won’t be borrowing or loaning your shares for shorting.
4) On stocks over $1, if you regularly set high price GTC limit orders (in a margin acocunt) to prevent Etrade from shorting, they said they might look unfavorably on this, and could terminate your account for this behavior (since you are deliberately preventing them from making extra money off of your shares).
I'll report again later on about this when I get more info from other brokers.
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