How to borrow Locates in Hammer?
Some securities can be shorted without pre-locating the shares. Others are on the Hard to Borrow (HTB) list and need to be located and reserved first. If you try to short such a security without reserving it, you will get an error message.
The HTB list changes every day. If a particular security is hard to borrow, in HAMMER you will see an HTB icon next to the symbol or
The yellow would indicate that signifies a limited amount of locates available today upon reservation. The gray would indicate that there are no such shares available.
No H: Indicates that the stock is easy to borrow, allowing you to directly short it without needing to reserve locates.
If the security is hard to borrow, and any of your accounts has some shares reserved for shorting, the icon will be green:
Hover your mouse over the icon, and it will show you in a popup the info about the locate status of the security.
Clicking on the icon will bring up the Locate/Reserve window on which you can request a locate, or see how many shares you reserved and in which securities.
Locate/Reserve Window
The Locate/Reserve window can be accessed either by clicking on the or
icons next to the equity symbol, or from the Locate/Reserve tile in the dashboard menu.
The window will display either the Locate/Reserve information for the selected symbol or could display the current Hard-To-Borrow list of symbols and the locate/reserve info for each. If you need more shares reserved for future shorting, you'd need to request them on this window. Once the request is entered, it will either be reserved immediately (if available).
Note:
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To reserve locates, select stocks with a Yellow H. Click on the Yellow H icon, specify the desired amount of locates for reservation, and submit your application. Once approved, you can place short orders for the stock.
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Locates can be used free of charge intraday. However, if you hold locates overnight, an interest fee will be incurred.