Lending of my shares to short sellers?

[Rorydinho]

Hi all,

This has become a bit more widely known with the ongoing GME saga but, essentially, it appears that brokers can lend out your shares to short sellers.

I know this is the case with options, but this is probably more to do with the fact that you don’t actually own the shares, but…

Can our fully-owned shares be lent out to short sellers? And does the broker that FT uses do this?

I do not want my shares being lent out when these institutional short sellers are betting/working against me.

[toms]

They are not.

[Jonny]

I’d avoid T212 if this is your worry…

[Rorydinho]

Thanks. How certain are you of this?

Are you aware of any written statement/policy document that confirms this?

If not certain, I’m looking to set limit orders to stop this from happening, but it’ll take me ages as the limit per buy/sell transaction is £9,990 so I’ll need to create multiple batches (this limit needs to be removed/increased btw).

[Wulfy]

Freetrade hold the shares as nominee and don’t lend out your shares. It would be in the terms and conditions if they did and there’s nothing there.

[Rorydinho]

From my understanding though even if Freetrade are the nominee, it’s the broker that does this and this is generally normal practice.

So there’d need to be an agreement with the broker.

[Raul (Ann Onymuz)]

Freetrade is a broker.

Freetrade holds its customers shares in a nominee account with its customers as beneficiaries.

Freetrade doesn’t lend shares to short sellers. At the moment.

In principle I wouldn’t mind Freetrade considering that avenue to create an additional revenue stream that they could share with it’s customers who would have to decide to choose between opting in or opting out.