The market maker is not keeping track of which shares go where. They don't have numbers on them and he wouldn't know who bought them and when they sold them.
he just has to has to have as many borrowed as he has short. The person who doesn't have shares is the one who had them borrowed. They have the IOU.
Same reason if you have a margin account you might not get a vote at a corporate meeting. your shares might have borrowed out and the vote goes with it. You also might not get dividends. Usually the broker will cover the dividend out of the money made lending the shares.
Thank you. The theories that say that there is not NSS presuppose that there would not be any 0% short volume days. They Presuppose that MMs such as NITE would not be the only seller for the day and never fill the sold shares. They presuppose there are no problems with "book entry" as SevenTenEleven has clearly demonstrated otherwise. When you actually track down the individual days, the short volume and who sold and bought. You have to presuppose around the truth virtually every day that you look.
The short and distorters (that is catchy, Seven) have distorted things so much that the NSS is described as Fantasy.
The Fantasy is not actually looking at the individual days and how they were traded.
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