Unknown Fees in my live Account


Unknown Fees on 2022/9/2 -18.75 USD in my live account

Could someone explain this , thank you.

@ntu.lishin The $18.75 debit to the account was for stock borrowing fees the previous month in Aug 2023. The account held an overnight short position of 1 share of SPY between Aug 11 - 22.

Typically stock borrow fees are 2.5% / year (about .007% / day) of the closing price of the shorted stock multiplied by the number of shares held rounded up to the nearest round lot. Shares are always borrowed in round lot quantities. The lot size is dependent upon the stock but 99% (all but ~15) have a lot size of 100. This means that, even if one were to short only 1 share, the account gets charged borrow fees for 100 shares.

In the case of SPY, the stock borrow fees were about $.18/share per month. However, even if the position was a single share, the account is charged for borrowing a round lot or 100 x $.18 or about $18.

It’s generally very expensive to short stocks overnight in anything but 100 lot multiples.