No Shares Available to Short?

That was one of two error messages I got from Scottrade today when I tried to short Federal Trust Corp. (Amex: FDT), one of the stocks I mentioned in this recent post, "The Strongest and Weakest Banks in America". FDT had risen from about 65 cents per share when I posted that to 85 cents per share, and after following its candlestick charting on Americanbulls.com, I intended to short it at 80 cents today. Plan foiled.

The Strongest and Weakest Banks in America

Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz for this The "X"-List Report" (PDF) on the strongest and weakest banks in America. The list draws on data from the FDIC's Call Reports and the Office of Thrift Supervision's Thrift Financial Reports to rank banks and thrifts from strongest ("A") to weakest ("E"). Some of the "weak" ("D") and "very weak" ("E") banks are publicly traded, and could be candidates for selling short. Another idea might be a paired trade going short one of the weakest banks and going long one of the strongest. I haven't looked into these in detail yet, but here are the symbols of some of the "weak" and "very weak" publicly traded banks on this list, including one that's already in bankruptcy:

FCEN.OB

BCBF.OB

FMNTQ.PK

DSL

FDT

FLCM.OB

ITYC.PK