Favorite Stock to Short, page-78

@picastoc

"At CommSec, you are not able to sell shares that you do not own (short sell), however you may be able to establish a Short exposure to a stock by using Exchange Traded Options (ETOs)*."

@brednog brokers borrow first on behalf of the client, if they don't own the stock themselves. i.e. the borrowing is done first not at the end.

Ways to short which you can research:
OTC CFDs e.g. IG markets and most CFD providers. There is no more danger with these than normal trading. All CFD's are leveraged but that doesn't mean you have to utilize it. The other risk is whether the CFD provider has an accurate price feed, and honors stops and profit targets properly. There is much talk about 'broker manipulation' which is the least of your worries when it comes to the beast of the stock market.

DMA CFD's e.g FPMarkets. This is a conventional short as with a full service broker. The broker will borrow stock from an insto broker and your order will appear in the ASX order book as a 'real' order. This is the case for long and short positions.

A full service broker (probably cost a motza per trade).

Using options.

There is also a financing cost with shorting which is an issue if you hold a short position a long time. In the case of CFD's they are inherently leveraged so you will pay a financing fee daily. For a 5K position it will be around 10 - 20c per day. For a full service broker, they will charge a fee for for sourcing stock (borrowing from another broker) and lending it to clients.