I think I know one way to prevent the shares being lent out.
When they lend the shares the brokers move them to another account and collateralize that with cash (at least Schwab does it t6hat way, I presume it is the same for other brokers).
Many have posted that placing a limit sell order will prevent lending. That won't work. However, there is a way to use the actual account covenants to prevent the shares being lent out that involves covered call positions.
You need to have you account authorized for level 1 option trading (which allows you to write covered calls) but nothing broader than that (in particular, not going up to the trading level that allows naked short call positions). For IRAs this is no problem - level 1 is the highest you can go.
Buy the common, then write a covered call position against those shares. Write the highest strike front month calls (for LWLG these would currently be the June 35s) to minimize the risk of them actually being assigned. This does cap your gain in the event of an EXTREME windfall (LWLG going to 35 by Friday the 17th), but the covenants of your accounts disallow naked short positions, so your shares can not be lent out because they mechanism used transfer them to a separate shadow account, which would leave a (disallowed) naked short call position in you base account! When the calls expire, roll them out to the next month.
When a farther out options expiry position opens up, roll out your calls to that date (and up in strike if a higher one is there there). If you want more income, write lower strike price calls and monitor more closely. However, for the purpose of preventing lending, any strike will do.
I have done this with several stocks I did not want lent out, including LWLG. The LWLG shares I have in my IRAs are covered in this manner. I **DO** participate in the Schwab lending program, and they actively lend my uncovered positions but not the LWLG shares I have covered in those accounts, and I know that LWLG is being lent from other accounts. Since my non-IRA account **IS** authorized for naked call positions, I had to withdraw from the lending program in that account to prevent the lending. Unfortunately enrollment in the program is account by account, not security by security. I would have preferred to be able to tell Schwab "LWLG is off limits for lending but am not able to do so - despite numerous go-rounds with their customer service and compliance people. Since they HAD previously lent my LWLG in my non-IRA account (creating a naked short call position I was not aware of!) before I unenrolled that account, and Schwab IS lending shares from my IRAs on companies other than LWLG where I have not written covered calls, I conclude that the covered calls plus the "no short calls" provision in my IRA is what is preventing my LWLG shares there from being lent out there,(and that this would similarly prevent my non-IRA LWLG shares from being lent out if I ratcheted back my options permissions there as well.
Even if you are not enrolled in a securities lending program, the broker still can not create naked positions in accounts not pre-authorized to hold them.
The elegance of this solution is that it uses the brokers' own internal compliance rules to prevent the lending you don't want. Telling the broker or their customer service "don't do this" does not work. However, their internal compliance people will force the behavior you want simply by doing their jobs.
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