MGK enters the back half of June with a notable split: short sellers who piled in last week are already trimming, while options traders remain more bullish than at any point in recent memory.
The short interest story has shifted since the earlier note this week. Shares short peaked near 1.02 million on June 11, then retreated to 910,000 by June 16 — still up 384% on the week in headline terms, but the direction has reversed intraday. At 1.16% of free float, the absolute level remains too small to constitute genuine bearish conviction on a fund of this size. Borrow conditions reinforce that read. Availability is running at roughly 985% — nearly ten shares available to lend for every one already borrowed — and cost to borrow, while up 52% on the week to 0.80%, is still near the floor of what any security charges. The lending market is signalling no stress whatsoever.
The more interesting signal is in options, and it tells a bullish story. The put-call ratio of 0.274 is now 2.45 standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.242 — not because put buyers are piling in, but because call volume has surged relative to a historically tight baseline. For most of May and into June, the PCR sat in a narrow band between 0.229 and 0.257. This week's move cleanly breaks that range to the upside, driven by call demand. Options traders are not hedging; they are expressing directional bullishness on the mega-cap growth basket.
The price action offers some nuance. MGK closed at $88.29 on June 16, up 1.6% on the week but off 1.1% on the day — a mild softening after a strong run. The one-month change is essentially flat at -0.3%, suggesting the fund has been consolidating rather than trending. The ORTEX short score of 29.6 is unremarkable and has moved in a narrow range all week, consistent with the low structural short interest that has defined this ETF for months.
The divergence between a short-term spike in shares borrowed and the persistent call-side dominance in options is the clearest tension worth tracking. One of those signals will prove to have been the better read — and the next week's price action in the mega-cap growth names that make up this fund's core holdings will be the scorecard.
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