First, securities lending is more flexible, and the short-selling ratio of different stocks can be adjusted at will. The stock index futures is a basket of short selling, and the relative proportion of each stock cannot be adjusted. In other words, when you only want to short a component stock with a smaller weight in the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index, you have to short the other 299 stocks at the same time, which is very inconvenient.

Second, stock index futures have good liquidity, and securities lending is sometimes out of stock.

Third, the transaction cost of stock index futures is low, only about one tenth of the nominal amount. Short selling has to pay a handling fee of about one thousandth.

Fourth, stock index futures are not borrowed, so there is no cost. Securities lending is borrowed from others, and the annual interest rate is about 65,438+00%.

Fifth, the leverage of stock index futures is about 7 times, and the margin trading is estimated to be about 2 times. The capital efficiency is much worse ~

Personally, I think that if there are sufficient sources of securities lending and the annual interest rate is low (financed by index funds), it can actually replace the dominant position of stock index futures.