Borrow Fee Ranking¶
OVERVIEW¶
The Borrow Fee Ranking is a focused view inside the Short Squeeze surface that ranks every US equity by its current published annualized borrow-fee rate. When a ticker's borrow fee jumps overnight — say, 2% to 80% — that signals near-zero supply of available short shares. The shorts that remain are paying to stay short, and any positive catalyst lifts the stock through their stops. This is one of the clearest "squeeze is converging" signals in the market.
Data coverage
Borrow-fee data is sourced from Schwab retail-borrow data. Approximately 92% of the top-50 squeeze leaderboard has a published fee rate. The remaining 8% displays as N/A — this is a broker-level publishing gap, not a Tapeboard data bug.
FEATURES¶
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Ticker | US equity symbol |
| Borrow Fee % | Current annualized borrow-fee rate; animates red/green on interday step changes |
| Prior-Day Fee % | Previous session's rate; use the delta to identify overnight supply contractions |
| HTB Count | Hard-to-borrow count; when > 0, broker-level borrow is unavailable and shorts must use reserve-borrow |
| SI % Float | Short interest as a percentage of float |
| Days-to-Cover | Estimated sessions required to cover the outstanding short position |
The table is sorted descending by fee %. Fee percentage cells animate red or green when the rate steps up or down interday — a move from 12% to 65% is a direct "borrow scarcity just collapsed" signal.
HOW TO USE¶
Pre-market
Scan the top 10 rows for overnight fee jumps. A ticker at 5% yesterday and 75% today is the textbook setup — overnight news has contracted borrow supply and remaining shorts are paying up to hold their positions.
Mid-session
Tickers showing a 90%+ fee that is still rising intraday are at peak squeeze convergence. Borrow supply is shrinking as price rises. The Squeeze Scanner cross-reference will rank these names near the top of the leaderboard.
Risk screening
Filter out any ticker with HTB > 0 before entering a short. Brokers can recall your borrow at the worst possible moment.
The perfect triangle
Fee % + SI % Float + Days-to-Cover together form the most reliable squeeze setup signal. A 35% borrow fee × 40% SI float × 8 days-to-cover is a textbook convergence today.
High fee ≠ squeeze risk on its own
A 90% borrow fee with only 5% SI float means the borrow desk is scarce but outstanding short volume is not large enough to fuel a squeeze. Do not trade the fee in isolation.
NAVIGATION¶
Path: /short-squeeze-stocks/highest-borrow-fee
Accessible from the SHORT SQUEEZE sidebar item via its sub-navigation, or by direct URL. The same URL serves as a public SEO landing page for anonymous and non-authenticated users in read-only mode.
DATA SOURCE¶
| Property | Detail |
|---|---|
| Source | Schwab retail-borrow published rates |
| Refresh cadence | Daily at market open |
| Backend tables | squeeze_scores, short_borrow_rates |
| Pipeline | Borrow-fee oracle runs through the Squeeze Leaderboard cron; fee rates are stored alongside the squeeze score |
RELATED¶
- Short Squeeze Scanner — parent surface; borrow fee is one column in the main leaderboard
- Reg-SHO Threshold List — companion surface showing where fails-to-deliver have triggered SEC threshold-list inclusion
- Scanner — live scanner with the
high-short-interest-squeezepreset