I have been watching the disaster of Movie Pass’s HMNY parent and people keep blaming others shorting the stock. But I see here that NASDAQ has restricted the stock. I’m not familiar much with shorting stocks, so can it be shorted?
https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=shortsalecircuitbreaker
HMNY can be shorted. Current short interest is about 56 million shares, or about 1.6 average days’ worth of trading volume. https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/hmny/short-interest
Under Rule 201 of the SEC’s Regulation SHO, exchanges and ATSs must adopt rules that restrict the prices at which short sales may be executed. Basically, when the price of a stock drops by more than 10% from its prior night’s close, short selling is only allowed if the short sale price is above the “national best bid or offer” (NBBO). This means that you can’t short the stock unless the stock price is on an “uptick.” Accordingly, rule 201 is sometimes called the “uptick rule” or that “alternative uptick rule” (the latter because it replaced an old SEC uptick rule). The restriction lasts for the rest of the trading day of the price drop and for all of the following trading day.
The short selling restrictions in place on Nasdaq are listed on this site: Short Sale Circuit Breaker
As of the date of your question, HMNY is subject to the short selling restriction on Nasdaq. Under the SEC’s rules, short selling HMNY should be similarly restricted on all other U.S. exchanges and ATSs for the same reason that Nasdaq imposed its restriction. The restriction will end on the close of business 7/27/2018 unless there is another drop in HMNY’s price triggering another restriction. In the meantime, people can still short the stock as long as their short is on an uptick. So shorting HMNY is still allowed but the prices at which HMNY can be shorted are temporarily restricted.