Short 1 share: Interest on 100 shares?

Getting Started with Alpaca
1

If I short 1 share of AAPL at 205.00, am I getting charged interest on 100 shares of AAPL?

So, it’s interest on $20,500?

And the rate, not currently discoverable, is somewhere between 0.3% to 3% annually for easy to borrow stocks. So between $6.15 and $615

So my fee for shorting = days held / 365 * (up to $615).

So a week short, in the worst case, would be 7 / 365 * 615 = $11.79

I assume these fees are not shown in paper trades.

2

@SteveWired You packed several questions in your post and I’l try to answer…

If I short 1 share of AAPL at 205.00, am I getting charged interest on 100 shares of AAPL?
Yes, the borrowed quantity is rounded up to the next 100 shares.

So, it’s interest on $20,500?
The interest is debited daily and is calculated as below. (note the ‘day’ is actually the ‘settle date’ and is T+1 after the trade date) So yes, if the close on the settle date was $205.00 the interest is charged on $20,500.00.
borrow fee = (end of day market value * annual_rate) / 360

And the rate … [is] between $6.15 and $615
The current rate is 2.5% for ETB shares in the SP500. So the daily cost would be $1.42 or $9.94/wk (assuming no change in daily prices)

I assume these fees are not shown in paper trades.
Correct. Unfortunately shorting fees are not captured in paper accounts at this moment.

There is a description in the docs here.

3

Thanks Dan. Great reply.

You may wish to update your docs. The 2.5% as an example is not mentioned anywhere.