We study the effects of a price transparency shock in the Brazilian equity lending market, an over-the-counter market. Previously, the available loan fee benchmark was the mean loan fee of the past 15 trading days. On March 1, 2011, this interval was reduced to three days, significantly improving short-sellers’ ability to predict current loan fees. We find that after the benchmark change, loan fees fell, lending volume increased, total lending revenue remained stable, high-cost lenders lost market share, and price efficiency increased. Our results suggest implementing price benchmarks in OTC markets can improve market quality.

Using market-wide data from the Brazilian stock lending market at the deal level, we find strong evidence of short-selling skill for institutions and individuals. Skilled short-sellers present out-of-sample performance persistence. Exploring the granularity of our dataset, we find that skilled short-sellers do not display the disposition effect, are more likely to pick value, liquid, high-volatility, and losing stocks, and to initiate a short position before earnings announcements and around sell recommendations.

High loan fees generate short-selling constraints and, therefore, reduce price efficiency. Despite the importance of loan fees, empirical evidence on their determinants is scarce. Using a market-wide deal-by-deal data set on the Brazilian equity lending market which uniquely identifies borrowers, brokers, and lenders, we are able to construct a proxy of search costs at the borrower–stock–day level. We find that—for the same stock, on the same day—borrowers with higher search costs pay significantly higher loan fees. Our results suggest that regulators should encourage the use of a centralized lending platform to reduce search costs in the lending market.