The NOBO list (Non-Objecting Beneficial Owners) thing is just another ploy for Companies who are more interested in getting their stock price up then taking care of business. Without the "OBO" list (Objecting Beneficial Owners). Though I will admit IF a company is really not putting any more shares out and they really do have more shares on the list then the float, there should be a very large short in the specific stock.
In case anyone doesn't know what those two lists are and what the difference between the two are. Here it is:
The NOBO list is a list that includes the Name, Address and Size of position of a stock held in "street name" at brokerage houses for the Non-Objecting Beneficial Owners. The genesis of getting your name on the list has to do with two things. First, when you opened your account at your brokerage firm, there was a question that probably said something like "'Your brokerage firm' will give your personal information to any company that you hold stock with us in unless you selected 'no'" In other words it is usually done as a "negative consent". A lot of people, and most funds for privacy concerns usually do select "no". So those people will not be included on the NOBO list, but instead will be on the OBO list. The OBO list is not accessible by the Company. What these lists are used for is to send out proxy info, shareholders letters and such, but have been known to be used for more nefarious purposes, particularly by stock promoters, and are both usually done through ADP. Secondly, unless things have changed over the past year since I saw my last NOBO list, certain firms like NFC Clearing have left off ALL of their clients on NOBO lists. Requested or otherwise.
Now if a company really wants to find out what their short is there is a better way that is even more easily accessible to Companies though it updates slowly and that is to take the Shareholder list from the TA and look for the total number of shares that are held by CEDE (A division of Depository Trust Corp. (DTC) that is the "vault" division that is suppose to hold the "certs" for around 90% of "street name" positions and other much smaller equivalents of CEDE like Canadep which is stock held from Canadian brokerage firms and Midwest who hold pretty much the balance). The TA's shareholder list is suppose to always total the number of shares issued and outstanding. It is made up of individual names and addresses of all shareholders who hold certificates in their own name, both non-restricted and restricted and for brokerage held street name stock the certs show up under the CEDE and the other two). The TA list is easily attained by any company from its Transfer Agent. After the Company gets a current Shareholders list, they then need to get a copy of the Security Position Reports "SPR's" from DTC. What this list is, is a list of all brokerage firms that hold stock in Street Name. The SPR's do not give the breakdown of shareholders, just the total amount held by each Brokerage firm including both NOBO and OBO.
So if you take the total of shares held in street name and it exceeds the number of shares that show up on the Shareholders list under the three "Depository's" mentioned above, the difference should be what is short. Now if a stock is very active, there could be some lag time in clearing that might give the appearance of a short at a moment in time. But once the volume slows down for a period of time, and you still have the discrepancy you will pretty much know your short position. But even with this second technique, you could still have a problem getting the info DTC as most of you know has been the target of many as to they being the problem that has created naked shorting. Their lists are proprietary to them and they are not required to give the SPR list to any company. But it is a subscriber service that the make good money from. They charge companies $87 each time a subscriber downloads their list. The list is always three days old due to settlement reasons. I have know of companies who have large naked shorts have tried to become subscribers and have been stonewalled by DTC in giving them access.
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer". F Zappa
