Star8 Corp (STRH)

[MichaelKane]

Data in the Short Sale Files includes only trades that are publicly disseminated and excludes trades that are not publicly disseminated. As a result, some offsetting buying activity related to reported short selling would not be reflected in the Daily File and may result in the appearance of a higher concentration of short sale to total volume.

A common example is where a firm is facilitating a customer order to sell long. The firm may elect to first sell an equivalent number of shares from its own trading account to another firm and then purchase the shares from the customer at the same price to fill the outstanding long sale order. Trading in this manner reduces risk for the firm by enabling it to manage its inventory and lock in a price for the customer execution. Although this trading model involves two separate trades—one between the two firms and one between the firm and its customer—the two offsetting trades are executed at the same price to fill a single customer order. Thus, FINRA rules provide for the public dissemination of only one of the trades (the trade between the two firms) so as not to overstate the reported volume.5 If the firm facilitating the customer long sale order has either no position or a short position in the security in its trading account, the trade with the other firm is reported as short and included in the short sale volume calculations in the Daily File. The volume associated with the firm’s purchase from its customer, however, is not reflected in the Daily File. Thus, the firm’s short sale is included in the short sale volume calculations without any indication that it is associated with an offsetting purchase to facilitate a customer long sale.