Fails to deliver (FTD)

Shares that were sold but not delivered at settlement; the SEC publishes aggregate fails twice a month.

A fail occurs when the seller does not deliver the shares by the settlement date, whether from a naked short sale, an operational error or a late borrow. The SEC publishes the total failed-to-deliver shares per security for each settlement day, and persistent fails place a stock on an exchange's threshold securities list. Fails are not the same as short interest and the two figures are not interchangeable.

We archive the SEC's file and show it verbatim: every US company page carries its own fails balances beside its short interest, and the fails-to-deliver page ranks the largest.

Read more: US fails to deliver.