SOXQ enters the back half of June with a striking dislocation: the ETF is up 15% over the past month, yet short sellers have been piling in at an extraordinary pace.
The short interest story here is genuinely unusual for an ETF. SI has jumped 381% week-on-week to reach 8.35% of float — a dramatic acceleration that began around June 9, when shares short leapt from roughly 242,000 to over 1 million in a single session. That move was not a gradual drift. It was a step-change, and it has persisted. The borrow market has tightened sharply in response. Availability has collapsed from 445% a week ago to just 40% now — meaning for every share currently lent out, only four-tenths of one more is available to borrow. That's firmly in tight territory. Cost to borrow has climbed with it, rising 52% over the week to 2.56%, the highest level in at least 30 days. The 52-week low for availability touched 8.2%, so conditions could get tighter still, but the current trajectory is notable.
Options positioning adds a different layer. Put/call ratio has actually eased relative to recent norms — running at 1.25, roughly one standard deviation below its 20-day average of 1.33. That's a quieter hedging posture than the market was carrying through most of May, when PCR touched a 52-week high of 1.97 in early May and remained elevated into June. The drift lower in the ratio suggests options traders are growing less defensive even as short sellers are growing more aggressive. That contrast matters: it is not a uniform bear signal, but a divergence between two groups reading the same tape differently.
The ORTEX short score has moved accordingly. It climbed from 38 on June 8 to 53.5 now — crossing the midpoint of the 0-100 scale and accelerating higher through the week. The score reflects the combination of rising SI, tightening availability, and higher borrow cost rather than any single metric in isolation. Worth noting that the fund dropped 5.7% on June 16 alone, even as the one-week return remains positive at 5%. That intraday sell-off may itself have drawn fresh hedging demand — or it may reflect the same macro nervousness driving the short build.
As an ETF tracking the PHLX Semiconductor Index, SOXQ has no earnings date, no single-stock analyst coverage, and no insider activity to track. The relevant catalyst calendar is sector-wide: chip demand commentary from major equipment makers, export control headlines, and any macro read-through from AI infrastructure spend. What to watch in the days ahead is whether availability continues to tighten from its current 40% level — and whether the options market, which has so far stayed relatively calm, starts to catch up with the more anxious signal coming from the borrow market.
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