Bloomberg terminal will give you a lagging number for SI(Short interest).

If you want a current indicator you have to pay for it from companies like Markit that poll hedge funds. The idea being that if you want to know the number you pay by including your own data that they can then show to other funds in aggregate.

For the borrow rate you ask your prime brokerage(like a bank but for holding equities/derivatives/etc). They'll go find you shares and figure out what rate to charge you, while adding their own rate on top.

finviz mentions, the short float to be 7% and Short ratio is 1.05 which says it's much conservative than the numbers posted. How to explain the difference?

Lyft's float can be viewed one of two ways

1) Total Shares of 273Million this is what finviz is using. This includes locked up shares that can't trade right now

2) the Currently tradable float, this is 32 Million and what I, Bloomberg, Markit, and any non budget site will use as these are the only shares that currently matter.

Sorry, trying to reconcile the comments.

LifeOfPi mentioned the short float to = 7%. Chollida1 mentioned the 7% figure was using 273mil shares as a base.

So wouldn't the total shorted shares equal 19mil? (19mil = 273mil X 7%). However, Chollidal mentioned in the first post that 27mil shares are shorted. Trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between 19mil and 27mil...

PS. Not trying to nit-pick. The comments are very useful. Maybe I'm missing something....

Time of reporting matters here. Some report every 15 days. others with a different time frame. Probably that's the reason for discrepancy?

Makes sense. Thanks!

Short interest is really an irrelevant number. That number could be largely skewed by derivatives, corporate actions, etc. Additionally, foreign brokers do not have to report short interest to the SEC.

In regards to borrow rates, there are some sources that are fairly accurate, but usually only to prime brokers themselves. There is no public exchange.

Interactive Brokers is the only retail broker that I know of that is fairly transparent and fair in terms of borrow rates.

Even if they're skewed, it's still borrow on the existing floating shares?, no? I mean directionally - can it not mean that - even a small piece of good news will cause exponential movement due to shorts having to be covered.

Nasdaq site has information every 15 days or so: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/lyft/short-interest

The price dynamics of this are interesting, and a bit counter-intuitive, since selling the share short also puts short term pressure on the share downwards (at the sale price), especially if there´s a lot of shorting. Its because of this, and also because due to monetary expansion there is a positive long term bias in share prices, that short selling isn´t quite as simple as sometimes presented.

As pointed out above, if there is then a subsequent increase in price, and this can be because short sellers are forced to buy back their short for any reason (short squeeze), prices can very quickly increase out of control. The best case of this was the Porsche-Volkswagon "infinity squeeze" - when mathematically speaking, absent intervention, the price would have gone to infinity.

https://moxreports.com/vw-infinity-squeeze/

Good times.

Thinkorswim (from TDAmeritrade) has it for free. Just open a brokerage or IRA or something and you can access a paper trading account there; its among most powerful trading platforms widely available to consumers, and is surprisingly user friendly.

Ask your broker or see what pops up when you preview a short sale order. Fidelity will show you an interest rate if it's a hard-to-borrow stock. Interactive Brokers is quite good about showing rates as well.

Interactive Brokers has SLB information. You would need a valid account though.