S&P 500 Companies with Persistent Settlement Fails (5+ days, half-monthly; not short interest)

## What this measures

For each half-month (the SEC's file periods: the 1st to the 15th, and the 16th to month end), the number of S&P 500 companies that had a fail-to-deliver streak of at least five consecutive settlement days running on at least one settlement day in that half. A streak means the stock showed a non-zero aggregate balance of shares that failed to be delivered in the National Securities Clearing Corporation's Continuous Net Settlement system on each of those days. Each point is dated the half-month's last settlement day.

## Why it matters

Settlement fails are market plumbing. Fails that persist for a week in large, liquid stocks point to friction in delivering shares: tight securities lending, operational problems, heavy ETF creation and redemption, or shares that are hard to borrow. A rise across many large companies at once is a stress signal for the settlement system.

## How to read it

Higher means more large companies with fails that did not clear within a week. Compare against the series' own history; it moves with market stress and index events. Individual companies' fail figures are on their Palanor company pages.

## What it does not say

This is NOT short interest and it is not evidence of naked short selling. The SEC says fails can occur for a number of reasons on both long and short sales and "are not necessarily the result of short selling". The data are aggregate net balances at a point in time in NSCC's CNS system only; any non-zero balance counts, however small relative to the float. The SEC publishes each half-month roughly two weeks after it ends, so the newest point lags by two to four weeks. Current S&P 500 members only.

## Source

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Fails-to-Deliver Data (https://www.sec.gov/data-research/sec-markets-data/fails-deliver-data). Public information under the SEC website dissemination policy; cite the SEC as the source.

## Revision — 2026-09-26

Universe updated to current S&P 500 constituents (8 out, 3 in). Out: Builders FirstSource, Molson Coors and The Trade Desk, which left the index on 21 September 2026; Electronic Arts, which was taken private and left on 5 August 2026; and MongoDB, Cloudflare, Snowflake and Zoom, which were never members and had been included in error since May 2026. In: Bloom Energy, Everpure and Illumina, which joined on 21 September 2026. Membership now comes from a dated constituent list refreshed monthly. The corrected list applies from 26 September 2026. Readings before that date are unchanged.