Arca Biopharma (ABIO) was the HTB du jour, doing 319,000 trades and $1.3BB in volume. It was so hard to borrow that my brookie didn’t have a borrow, which was a good thing since it went from $4 to $22. It did give me a spot very late in the day, and the brookie was asking .999 a share so I passed (it woulda been worth it). Of course I’d never think of getting long something like this. Too easy. Buy $13 sell $20, who wants to do that?

I got in trouble again with IB … HX (249,000, $144MM) had plenty of shares there (at first!) so I shorted there pre-open, then got jammed out, then reversed long, stopped out, reversed short, double size, stopped out re-reverse long, etc. Total mess. Extremely costly. Again easily over a thousand dollars in commissions generated (zero commissions, you say?). Calmed down. Re-shorted it, jammed out, top tick. Deep breath. Re-short, Jammed out. Top tick. It finally and legitimately cracks. IB no borrow. Have to go to brookie and pay up. No way to get the money back at IB. Just gone. No borrow. Not when you need it. I’m done shorting at IB. I’ve said it before but I really mean it now.

Shorted MARK (146,000, $209MM) at IB. Worst ave than yesterday. It cracked, I covered some but not enough. Was expecting it to fall to $2 after earnings. It didn’t, it went up, jammed me out for a sizable loss. Then tanked. Yeah, one of those days. Really bad. Can’t lose money like this every day. If I did I’d be out of biz in a month. Maybe less. And it’s a lot of money to lose. Scary.