Securities Lending

Cost to borrow elevated on Biocept

Cancer diagnostics company Biocept, Inc. (Ticker: BIOC) has received a fair amount of attention in the securities lending space recently. As with similarly sized biotech companies (Biocept currently touts a market-cap of approximately $45mm), the limited amount of borrowable stock can create surges in borrow costs. Last week’s rally in the price of BIOC shares created one of those surges, as the number of interested short sellers surpassed the amount of available supply. The stock last week jumped more than 230% by midweek, opening Monday morning at $1.45 and spiking to $4.91 on Wednesday before backing off to end the week up roughly 114% at $3.10 a share. Prior to last week, the cost to borrow BIOC had remained fairly stable, but more recently the stock has been trading with more expensive borrow rates. There remains pockets of shortable supply, however the rate continues to be elevated. Shares in BIOC are up roughly 17% in the final hour of trading on Monday afternoon.

Chart – Three-month chart of Biocept

Table - The following table shows the hardest to borrow securities per sector during the week of 02/23/15 - 02/27/15.