Interactive Brokers has announced the launch of the Securities Lending Dashboard designed to help clients assess the short-selling activity for specific securities and inform trading decisions.
The new Securities Lending Dashboard allows sophisticated individual and institutional investors, including hedge funds, to view an expanded universe of securities lending data across key metrics. The firm writes that this complements Interactive Brokers’ Securities Loan Borrow (SLB) system, which is a fully electronic and actionable self-service utility that lets clients search for stocks available to short on the Interactive Brokers platform for free.
Powered by Orbisa, the new securities lending data includes information for securities that trade in North America, Europe and Asia and is provided to all clients of Interactive Brokers through Fundamentals Explorer on the Trader Workstation platform. The firm writes that clients can now use both the Securities Lending Dashboard, as well as the existing Securities Loan Borrow system, which includes the quantity, number of lenders and current indicative borrow rates for securities based on IBKR client holdings.
“Interactive Brokers continues to be at the forefront of transparency in the securities lending market,” says Milan Galik, Chief Executive Officer of Interactive Brokers. “The new Securities Lending Dashboard is a straightforward tool for advanced traders and hedge fund clients seeking to analyse potential short-selling investment opportunities. Our clients can now access a more comprehensive data set to evaluate their short trade ideas and use our Securities Loan Borrow system to identify shortable securities.”
The new Securities Lending Dashboard lets clients view a snapshot of securities lending market data and then explore additional market intelligence, including:
· Utilisation: A measure of supply and demand in the securities lending market, which measures the on-loan quantity (shares actively borrowed) relative to the inventory quantity (shares available to be borrowed)
· Borrower Depth: A score indicating how many borrowers are actively borrowing shares
· Lender Depth: A score indicating how many lenders are actively lending shares
· Average Duration: The weighted average duration of all open loans, expressed in calendar days
Clients can also select two stocks and compare short-selling data across different date ranges.
Additionally, there is a Premium subscription offering that includes the following data:
Short Interest Indicator: A measure of shares borrowed versus shares publicly available to trade
On-Loan Quantity: The number of shares actively being borrowed
On-Loan Value: The value of the shares actively being borrowed
Days To Cover: An estimate of how long it would take to cover a short position given recent trading volumes by comparing the on-loan balance to recent trading volumes; the higher this figure, the greater the risk of a potential short squeeze
