Lucid Group is grinding lower at $5.02, down 17% over the past month, as a cost-to-borrow spike signals fresh stress in a lending market that was already near-fully locked out.
The borrow story has deteriorated further since last week's note. Cost to borrow doubled in the space of four sessions — hitting a peak near 44% on June 11 before pulling back to 20% by June 16. That intra-week spike is the sharpest move in at least six weeks and suggests a sudden scramble for shares that weren't there to begin with. Availability remains essentially zero: just 0.08% of borrowed shares are still available to lend — roughly one share for every 1,200 already out. This condition has been near-permanent since early May, but the cost spike confirms the scarcity is biting harder. The ORTEX short score has crept to 79.4, its highest reading in the dataset, up from 77 two weeks ago.
Short interest itself has barely moved. Bears hold roughly 18% of the free float — about 58 million shares — down a modest 4% on the week and barely 2% lower over the month. The FINRA fortnightly put days-to-cover at 4.3, confirming a large, sticky position. What changed this week wasn't the size of the short book — it was the price of maintaining it. At 20% annualised cost to borrow (and a brief excursion to 44%), the carry on a short position is becoming genuinely painful. Options traders are moving in the opposite direction to what that pressure might imply: the put/call ratio at 1.23 is now running almost 1.7 standard deviations its 20-day average of 1.31. That shift — fewer puts relative to calls than usual — is a notable contrast to the persistent bearishness in the borrow market.
The Street remains broadly negative. The consensus sits at sell, and recent analyst moves have all pointed one way: Citigroup cut its target from $17 to $14 in mid-May while holding its lone Buy rating; TD Cowen trimmed from $10 to $7; Benchmark downgraded to Hold. The mean target implied by available data sits well above the current price, though given the pace of cuts the gap is narrowing fast. The bear case centres on suspended 2026 guidance, worsening gross margins, and the near-certainty of further dilutive capital raises. Bulls point to $3.2 billion in liquidity and a revenue target in the high-teens billions, but Q1 delivery misses tied to a seat-supplier issue and delayed Gravity launches have dented management credibility. The ORTEX factor score for analyst recommendation divergence ranks at the 92nd percentile — an unusually wide spread between the lone optimist and the rest of the pack.
The ownership picture adds one structural note worth watching. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holds 45% of shares outstanding and has not changed its position. Uber, which disclosed a 9.7% stake earlier this year — adding 24 million shares — is the most recent large mover. That Uber position, reported in April, has not been publicly added to since. Against that backdrop, insider activity has been uniformly directional: the acting CEO, acting CFO, and CFO all sold small lots at $5.68 on June 5. The values were trivial — under $90,000 in each case — but the clustering of C-suite sells at a multi-year low is not a comfort signal.
Lucid's next earnings event is scheduled for August 5. The stock has fallen on each of the last three post-earnings sessions — by 11%, 7.5%, and 3.2% respectively — with the five-day reaction also negative in two of those three instances. With cost to borrow still elevated and availability near zero, the mechanics of any relief rally remain constrained: shorts cannot easily be forced to cover when there are almost no shares to replace them. What to watch into August is whether the CTB spike is a one-week anomaly that fades, or the start of a sustained step-up that begins to pressure position sizing among the bears.
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