How do I determine whether there is a cost to borrow a stock before entering a short sale order in TWS?

When you sell stock short, MEXEM must locate and borrow shares to make delivery to the purchaser at settlement. Whether or not there is a cost to borrow those shares depends upon the supply of shares available to borrow and the demand from other short sellers to borrow shares. MEXEM provides a number of tools to estimate the cost to borrow before entering your order. Note that borrow costs tend to fluctuate daily along with supply and demand and the actual cost can only be decided at the end of the day when the essential borrows have been sourced. Outlined below are tools to decide the indicative borrow rate: The Shortable column within TWS shows the number of shares available and the projected borrow rate for each of the stocks you are monitoring. See: How do I see whether a stock is shortable on TWS? The SLB Rates tool within TWS. To open the tool, select the SLB Rates option from the Analytical Tools menu located on the TWS top menu bar. Then, enter the symbol for the stock of interest. This tool also provides a bar graph of historical rates for the prior 10 days. More information and examples on calculating the cost of borrowing stocks at Mexem can be found on our website.