You can short any stock you like and most brokers will be more than happy
to accommodate you, since they make a commission on each side of the
transaction. However,
1) Short sales for stocks (unlike futures contracts, options or ETFs) are
subject to the uptick rule. This means you must wait for SCO to go up for a
certain number of ticks before you can short it. This rule was put in
place to prevent stocks from plummeting further during a fast down market.
2) To short stocks you must have an account with margin features. Short
sales are sold against your margin account. It's highly unlikely that
you'll find a broker willing to open a margin account with only $500. I
would be very wary of a broker that did.
Although I use Schwab, I've heard from others that E-Trade is very good and
I've heard good things about ScottTrade.
I'm curious on why you believe SCO will crash in a few weeks (financial
reasons not Linux reasons :) ).
Peter
At 12/9/2003 06:58 PM , you wrote:
>On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 10:03, Rob Wultsch wrote:
> > I would like to short about 500 bucks worth of SCO. In terms of online
> > traders is there any that you guys would suggest?
> >
> > Cause SCO is a safe guess for crashing in a few weeks...
>
>I looked into this a little, and I couldn't find anywhere to short
>SCO... remember, someone has to take you up on the deal ;)
>
> --Ted
>