ShortSaleReason (FIX tag 853)

intFIX 4.4FIX 5.0 SP2

ShortSaleReason (tag 853) is an int field defined in FIX 4.4 and FIX 5.0 SP2. It appears in 1 message type, always optionally. It is an enumerated field with 6 defined values.

At a glance

Tag: 853
Name: ShortSaleReason
Datatype: int
Dialects: FIX 4.4 and FIX 5.0 SP2
Messages: 1
Valid values: 6

What the specification says

FIX 4.4

Reason for short sale

FIX 5.0 SP2

Reason for short sale.

Descriptions are quoted from the FIX Orchestra sources under the Apache 2.0 licence.

A real message using tag 853

TradeCaptureReport · FIX 4.4

Tag	Field	Wire value	Meaning
8	BeginString	FIX.4.4
9	BodyLength	171
35	MsgType	AE	Trade Capture Report
49	SenderCompID	BOARTEAM
56	TargetCompID	COUNTERPARTY
34	MsgSeqNum	2
52	SendingTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
571	TradeReportID	EXAMPLE
570	PreviouslyReported	N	not reported to counterparty
32	LastQty	1000000
31	LastPx	1.09210
75	TradeDate	20240101
60	TransactTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
552	NoSides1 entry	1	repeating group
54	Side	1	Buy
37	OrderID	ORD-10042
853	ShortSaleReason	0	Dealer Sold Short
10	CheckSum	186

Edit and decode it yourself

Shown with | separators for readability. On the wire FIX uses SOH (0x01), an invisible control byte — and because BodyLength and CheckSum are computed over the actual bytes, the two forms have different checksums. Both are valid and both decode here.

Open in the full decoder →

Generated from the FIX 4.4 dictionary and verified at build time: it parses and validates with no issues. Open the decoder to try your own message.

Valid values

A value outside this list is not a parse error — the message still decodes — but validate() reports it as validate/value-not-in-enum.

Value	Meaning	Symbolic name
0	Dealer Sold Short	DEALER_SOLD_SHORT
1	Dealer Sold Short Exempt	DEALER_SOLD_SHORT_EXEMPT
2	Selling Customer Sold Short	SELLING_CUSTOMER_SOLD_SHORT
3	Selling Customer Sold Short Exempt	SELLING_CUSTOMER_SOLD_SHORT_EXEMPT
4	Qualified Service Representative (QSR) or Automatic Giveup (AGU) Contra Side Sold Short	QUALIFED_SERVICE_REPRESENTATIVE / QUALIFIED_SERVICE_REPRESENTATIVE_CONTRA_SIDE_SOLD_SHORT
5	QSR or AGU Contra Side Sold Short Exempt	QSR_OR_AGU_CONTRA_SIDE_SOLD_SHORT_EXEMPT

Where tag 853 appears

Requiredness is a property of the message, not of the field: the same tag can be optional in one message and conditionally required in another.

Message	MsgType	FIX 4.4	FIX 5.0 SP2	Where in the message
TradeCaptureReport	AE	Optional	Optional	directly on the message body
TradeCaptureReportAck	AR	—	Optional	directly on the message body

Wire format

A whole number, optionally signed. Leading zeros are legal on the wire and are preserved in the raw value. @boarteam/fix parses the value as a number and reports parse/invalid-int when it does not lex as one; the raw string is kept either way.

Read tag 853 in TypeScript

decode.tsts

import { createFixEngine } from "@boarteam/fix";import { dictionary } from "@boarteam/fix-dict-fix44";const fix = createFixEngine(dictionary);const { message, issues } = fix.parse(raw);const shortSaleReason = message.fields[853]?.raw;// e.g. "0" — Dealer Sold Short// The dictionary also carries the labels:const label = fix.dictionary  .fieldByTag(853)  ?.enumValues?.find((e) => e.value === shortSaleReason)  ?.description;

Decode this in your own code

The same engine that produced the decoded example above is an Apache-2.0 npm package with zero runtime dependencies. It runs in Node and in the browser, and parse() returns problems as data instead of throwing.

npm i @boarteam/fix @boarteam/fix-dict-fix44

Try the decoder Source on GitHub