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§BORROW FEEFREE

Borrow Fee Ranking

The Borrow Fee Ranking surfaces US equities with the highest published borrow-fee rates today — the cost-of-short-carry tell. A 100% annualized borrow-fee means shorts pay the full short-value every year just to hold the position; these are the hard-to-borrow names where the squeeze risk concentrates.

The Borrow Fee Ranking is a focused view inside the Short Squeeze surface that ranks tickers by their current published borrow-fee rate. When a ticker's borrow fee jumps from 2% to 80% overnight, that's a near-zero supply of available short shares — the shorts that remain are paying through the nose to stay short, and any piece of news lifts the stock through their stops. This is one of the cleanest "the squeeze is converging" tells in the market.

What it is

Borrow Fee Ranking — top tickers by annualized borrow fee rate today, with HTB flags and the underlying SI %float and days-to-cover context
Borrow Fee Ranking — top tickers by annualized borrow fee rate today, with HTB flags and the underlying SI %float and days-to-cover context

A ranked table of every US equity Tapeboard has a published borrow-fee rate for, sorted descending by fee %. Each row shows the ticker, the current borrow fee (annualized %), the prior-day borrow fee (for the delta), the hard-to-borrow count (HTB — when count > 0, broker-level borrow is unavailable and shorts must use reserve-borrow), the short interest % of float, and the days-to-cover. The fee percentage animates red/green when it steps up or down interday — a fee that ticks from 12% to 65% is the cleanest "scarcity just collapsed" signal there is.

When to use it

  • Pre-market: scan the top 10 for overnight fee jumps. A name that was 5% yesterday and 75% today is the textbook setup — overnight news has contracted the borrow supply and the remaining shorts are paying up to stay short.
  • Mid-session: tickers with a 90%+ fee that are RISING intraday are at peak squeeze convergence — borrow supply is shrinking as price rises. The Squeeze Scanner cross-ref will rank these high.
  • Risk screen: avoid shorting any ticker with HTB > 0. Brokers will recall your borrow at the worst time.

Open it

  • Path: /short-squeeze-stocks/highest-borrow-fee (linked from the SHORT SQUEEZE sidebar item's sub-nav, or directly)
  • Public SEO landing (anonymous / non-auth): same URL — read-only

Data source

The borrow-fee oracle pulls from Schwab retail-borrow borrow data (where the broker publishes rates — ~92% of the top-50 squeeze leaderboard has a fee rate; the remaining 8% is N/A by broker, NOT a data bug). Refreshed daily at market open. The borrow-fee oracle connects through the Squeeze Leaderboard cron — fee rates are stored alongside the squeeze score in squeeze_scores and short_borrow_rates.

Pro tips

  1. Fee + SI% + days-to-cover = the perfect triangle. A 35% borrow fee × a 40% SI-of-float × 8 days-to-cover is a textbook squeeze setup today.
  2. Don't trade the fee alone. A 90% borrow fee with only 5% SI float is a "the borrow desk is scarce but the outstanding shorts aren't large" tell — not a squeeze risk.
  3. HTB > 0 means the broker won't let you short. Don't fight the tape; take it off the list of tradable names.

FAQ — the questions traders actually ask

What is a borrow rate in stocks?

The annualized fee a short seller pays their broker to borrow the shares they're selling. A 25% borrow rate on a $10,000 short position costs ~$6.83 per day ($2,500/year) just to hold — before any price movement. Rates are set by supply and demand in the securities-lending market: plentiful lenders = low fee; scarce shares = the fee can exceed 100% annually.

What is a hard-to-borrow (HTB) stock?

A stock whose broker has little or no lendable supply. HTB names carry elevated borrow fees, and at HTB > 0 many brokers won't let you open a new short at all — or require a reserve-borrow request. The HTB count column in the ranking above is the binary tripwire: don't initiate shorts into it.

Where's today's hard-to-borrow stock list?

The Borrow Fee Ranking is exactly that — every US equity with a published fee, sorted descending, HTB-flagged. The daily Most Shorted Stocks digest reprints the top of the board every weekday close, and the short squeeze leaderboard adds the composite squeeze score on top.

Why did my borrow fee jump overnight?

Borrow supply contracted: a lender recalled shares, a buy-in hit, or demand spiked after news. Overnight jumps from single digits to 60%+ are the classic pre-squeeze tell — the fee is the price of scarcity, and scarcity is information.

Do I pay the borrow fee if I'm long?

No — the fee is charged to the SHORT side only. Longs are unaffected (and are the other side of the squeeze dynamic: shorts paying extreme fees are the fuel if price rises).

  • Short Squeeze Scanner — the parent surface; borrow-fee is one column in the main leaderboard
  • Reg-SHO Threshold List — the companion surface that shows where fails-to-deliver have triggered SEC threshold-list inclusion
  • Scanner — the live scanner with the high-short-interest-squeeze preset