Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals Inc (fka RCPIQ)

[mugs57]

new short interest 30,337,565 up again!
How do you short 30 million shares of the stock? (used an article i found and tailored it to STSI)
When a Tom, Dick or Harry want to short a stock they just put in the order with their broker, who arranges for them to borrow the stock from someone else or the brokerage itself provided the stock can be shorted. They need to have a certain amount of equity in the account (usually 50% of the trade value) before the order can be placed. They must also pay interest on the amount borrowed and pay the owner for any dividend amounts that the stock pays.
If a hedge fund wants to short 30 million shares of stock when there are only 117 million shares available to the public, the process is a little bit different. Broker-dealers often arrange for short sellers to borrow from large institutional investors, like pension funds. This would normally be a conflict of interest, to lend someone your asset so they can devalue it, but the funds take part because they can realize current income on investments they view as long term. So, at this time, there are a lot of investors who have lent their STSI shares even though they believe the stock will still be worth something when they get their shares back. If they were to decide that they do not want to risk the stock being driven to zero they would either increase the cost to borrow the stock or call their shares back all together.
It is important to remember that the investors allowing Hedge funds to borrow the stock are collectively making a bet that he is wrong, and that the stock will not be worthless in the long term. They are essentially letting him pay them interest to use their shares.
Surprise the institutional shares are:
• As of today Institutional Ownership is at a new high [2/8/2013]
(Less than 5% holders)
Total Number of Holders 122
% of Shares Outstanding 20.85%
Total Shares Held 30,506,364
you know what really sucks is that the average investor that the broker uses their shares to let the shorts borrow does not get paid only the big guys - typical wall street!