Shorts covered by "other party" without my consent?

Hi everyone,

Something strange (or perhaps not strange if someone comes up with an explanation) happened to me.

I short sold a couple of stocks of a company on a given day. Over the following days, it became a losing position, but nothing catastrophic.

I was willing to pay the daily borrow fees incurred by holding this position.

Then suddenly, last saturday, looking at my transactions (which the summary of is only updated with a 24hr lag) that "something" covered those shorts for me on the 19th.

Obviously, I ate a loss. When asking my broker's customer support they said "the other party" required the stocks by before noon on the 19th. They are not able to tell me how I could have known that I was required to return those shares by that date and time. I was under the assumption that they are "the other party" so I smell a bit of blame shifting here...

Is this a common event for people shorting stocks? Has this ever happened to you ?

Submitted January 26, 2018 at 10:00AM by speaking_of_witch http://ift.tt/2nd35z1