CounterPath Corp (CPAH) was the HTB (hard-to-borrow) du jour, doing 61,800 trades and $53.6MM in volume. The borrow was somewhat erratic, but I was eventually able to borrow what I wanted at 5.33 cents per share ($533 per 10,000). It gave me a good spot and this was an “all day fader” with near constant selling as you’ll see in the video below.

Whiting Petroleum Corp (WLL) is also hard-to-borrow now (in the old days, IB had unlimited shares of this one) and the borrow cost was 1.99 cents per share, about as cheap as it gets. It did 423,000 trades and I did trade it with mixed results (this means I lost money, but not much, lol).

Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (INO) is easy-to-borrow (ETB) and is a major pain in the ass as a result. I dug myself an enormous hole in the morning as I got it repeatedly wrong, shorting the low tick and covering the top tick, over and over (look at the wicks above 13.35, that’s ALL me buying there). Fortunately I didn’t go completely on tilt, and when it finally broke I was able to catch it with enough size to undo all the morning mess. When something is coiling and you’re just out of sync with it, losses can add up really fast.

There’s a reason you’re only as good as your last trade … you can easily go out of control with a single trade and lose everything and then some: wife and kids, pickup truck, dog, Zippo collection, you name it.