Expo Holdings Inc. (EXPH)

[patchman]

In the Division’s estimation, data made public by certain self-regulatory organizations (“SROs”) indicate that orders marked “short” under current regulations account for nearly 50% of listed equity share volume. Short selling involves a sale of a security that the seller does not own or a sale that is consummated by the delivery of a security borrowed by, or for the account of, the seller.4 Typically, the short seller later closes out the position by purchasing equivalent securities on the open market and returning the security to the lender.5 In general, short selling is used to profit from an expected downward price movement, to provide liquidity in response to unanticipated demand, or to hedge the risk of an economic long position in the same security or in a related securities.

and then..

This estimate was made by the Division based on short selling volume data for June 2010 made available by SROs. This estimate is consistent with estimates for prior months, and the short percentage varied little from day to day. The underlying data can be found at hyperlinks available at www.sec.gov/answers/shortsalevolume.htm, and have been provided since August 2009 by the SROs listed therein. As indicated on these hyperlinks, “short selling volume” is the volume of executed orders marked “short” or “short exempt” pursuant to Rule 200(g) of Regulation SHO (which requires broker-dealers to mark all equity sell orders as either “long,” “short,” or “short-exempt”). See 17 CFR 242.200(g). Under current rules, these order marks are not submitted to or reported on the Consolidated Tape, but are maintained as part of broker-dealers’ books and records pursuant to Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4. See 17 CFR 240.17a-3(a)(5)-(7) and 240.17a-4(b)(8).

short exempt are bona fide market making and riskless principle trades which are closed out off the tape in many cases due to trade order routing. reading how a trade is reported explains this in great detail. The only REAL short sale is the short sale marked SHORT and not SHORT EXEMPT.