On 6 January 2021, the Treasury published the Short Selling (Notification Thresholds) Regulations 2021 No. 5 to amend the notification threshold under Article 5(2) of the Short Selling Regulation from 0.2% to 0.1% of the issued share capital of an issuer. This change will come into force on 1 February 2021.
This means that from 1 February 2021 the notification threshold for issued share capital of a company that has shares admitted to trading on a UK trading venue (UK Regulated Market and UK MTF) will be 0.1%.
The EU (ESMA) made this decision in March 2020.
The FCA publishes short positions daily – See the public short positions disclosed to us – daily update (XLSX).
I find this very useful as a short position is often a red flag and a good idea to sell. I learnt this lesson the hard way when I held IQE and it was 12% shorted and I did not sell. I held on and eventually sold at 57p, and after I did so I found I was able to sleep more comfortably as I watched IQE decline further, although it has now gone up to 74p and is now 1.77% so I am happy not to be invested.
I noted the following short positions;
Sainsbury 9.4%
Morrisons 3.38%
Hargreaves Lansdown 2.56%
St James Place 1.39%
AJ Bell .72%
Saga .59%
Cliff Weight, Director, ShareSoc
DISCLOSURE: I hold shares in Saga, but none of the others mentioned in this blog.
This website is also useful for tracking short interests and changes thereto: https://shorttracker.co.uk/
What is the position date. I see some at 2014. Surely they have to close the position at some stage?
“Short Tracker” gets the shorting level info from the FCA database. I thought, though, that notification to the FCA database was when shorting level for a hedge fund exceeded 0.5%?
quote from the short tracker website
“When a fund manager discloses a position of less than 0.5% in a company, we now remove them from the current disclosures section and from the total short position”