I expect many of you like me have td for your broker. The discussions on locking shares so they can't be shorted caused me to wonder what kind of account I have since I never do anything other than normal buying and selling. I searched in td for lending shares for shorting, and this is what I found. "TD Ameritrade makes shares available for shorting only from margin accounts when margin is being used. If you have a cash account, your shares will never be loaned for short sales. You have a margin account if "Margin trading" is enabled in the Elections & routing section of Client Services > My Profile > General."
I used the instructions above to find out what kind of account I have. Lo and behold there is no "My Profile" option on the Client Services drop down menu. A search for My Profile/General got me to my profile and margin account is "enabled" apparently by default since I never knowingly told them to enable it. A little more research into how to disable it brought up a plethora of reasons td gives as to why it shouldn't be disabled. It appears it can be disabled, but requires a telephone call to td and a 2 business day wait. It suggests to me to be an expanded version of what the banks do to hold money to play the float. Listing the shares for sale appears to be an easier option to lock them from being shorted.
I used the instructions above to find out what kind of account I have. Lo and behold there is no "My Profile" option on the Client Services drop down menu. A search for My Profile/General got me to my profile and margin account is "enabled" apparently by default since I never knowingly told them to enable it. A little more research into how to disable it brought up a plethora of reasons td gives as to why it shouldn't be disabled. It appears it can be disabled, but requires a telephone call to td and a 2 business day wait. It suggests to me to be an expanded version of what the banks do to hold money to play the float. Listing the shares for sale appears to be an easier option to lock them from being shorted.
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