On 13 October 2023, following an open meeting, the SEC confirmed in a press release, the adoption of new  rules to enhance short selling disclosures namely:

• Rule 13f-2 requiring institutional investment managers that meet certain reporting thresholds to report on Form SHO short positions and short activity data for equity securities. Certain of this data will then be aggregated and publicly published; and
• Amendment to the NMS Plan governing CAT, so that CAT reporting firms indicate if an order is a short sale effected by a market maker in connection with bona fide market making activities.

Along with the Final Rule and Notice of Amendment of the NMS Plan, the SEC has issued a Fact Sheet.

Rule 13f-2 and Form SHO: The rules will require a manager to file a Form SHO via EDGAR within 14 calendar days after the end of each calendar month for each S12 registered equity security for which it has investment discretion, a monthly average of daily gross short positions of US$10 million or 2.5% of shares outstanding (and other certain thresholds for the equities of non-reporting issuers). For each equity security the SEC will then publish: (i) as an aggregated number of shares across all reporting managers, the number of shares of the equity security representing the mangers’ gross short position as well as corresponding aggregated U.S. dollar value; and (ii) net activity in the equity security aggregated across all reporting managers.

Compliance dates: Rule 13f-2, Form SHO and the amendment to the CAT NMS Plan will become effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register (the effective date). However, the compliance date for Rule 13f-2 and Form SHO will not then be for 12 months after that effective date (ie dependent on the publication date in the Federal Register, likely to be no earlier than mid December 2024) and compliance with the amendment to the CAT NMS Plan will be 18 months after the effective date (ie dependent on the publication date in the Federal Register, likely to be no earlier than mid June 2025).