The Australian Securities & Investments Commission has started daily reporting of aggregated short positions, which will be published on the ASIC website.
Short sellers have been required to report short positions to ASIC following the introduction by the Federal Government of new reporting obligations to improve transparency of short sales in the Australian market.
In these reports, short sellers disclose to ASIC the size of their overall short positions in specified listed financial products.
Starting today, ASIC is required to aggregate this information and report for each product the total of all short positions disclosed to ASIC for each reporting day. ASIC publishes this information four reporting days after the date the position is held. This means that the first report published today covers short positions held on 16 June 2010. The reports do not identify short sellers or their individual short positions.
Short position reporting provides a snapshot indication of the bearish sentiment towards a particular stock at any point in time. It also indicates the amount of overhang in the stock that will need to be covered at some point by short sellers purchasing shares.
For investors, this information may indicate the risk involved in trading the stock. This reporting, complemented by short selling transaction reporting and securities lending reporting (available from the Australian Securities Exchange), provides greater transparency on short selling activity in Australia.
The requirement for short sellers to lodge short position reports started on 1 June 2010, with ASIC required to publish the aggregated short position reports from today.
