JLHL (Julong Holding Limited) is in a quieter phase after weeks of extreme volatility — cost to borrow has fallen sharply, short sellers are retreating, yet the structural conditions that made this stock so combustible haven't gone anywhere.
The clearest change this week is in borrow cost. After peaking above 230% APR in early June, the cost to borrow has fallen to 62% — still high by any conventional measure, but less than a third of where it was seven days ago. That drop of 73% in a week is the most significant easing the lending market has seen since the squeeze began in late May. Short interest itself has also pulled back hard: estimated shares short are down 29% over the past month and roughly 29% over the past week alone, as short sellers who survived the June 9 carnage continue to close positions. Yet availability remains near the floor at just 6.4% — meaning only one share is available to borrow for roughly every sixteen already lent out. The lending pool is still almost fully occupied, even as fewer shorts are pressing in. That's the paradox: the borrow market is easing in price but not in supply.
The ownership structure explains why this setup persists. Hushi Holding Limited controls 93% of shares outstanding, leaving an extraordinarily thin tradeable float. With so little stock available to circulate, any renewed demand for borrows — from new shorts or from lenders recalling shares — can snap availability back toward zero almost instantly. The 52-week low for availability hit 0% earlier this year, and the current 6.4% reading shows how close the pool still sits to that floor. The ORTEX short score is 61.7, essentially unchanged over the past week, reflecting a market that remains under significant short-side stress even as individual metrics moderate. The days-to-cover rank sits in the 78th percentile, and the utilization rank is in the bottom 1st percentile — tighter than virtually every other stock in the ORTEX universe.
The price action adds its own context. After a 34% single-session drop on June 9 and a subsequent 13% bounce, the stock closed Tuesday at $23.95 — up 13% on the day but still down 16% on the week. That kind of intraday volatility in a tiny-float name with near-zero borrow availability is not unusual; it reflects a market where bid-ask spreads widen dramatically and small order flows move the price sharply in either direction. Among the closest correlated peers, STRL (Sterling Infrastructure) edged up about 1.9% on the week — a much calmer backdrop that underscores how idiosyncratic JLHL's situation remains relative to the broader construction and engineering sector.
What to watch next is whether the cost to borrow continues its descent toward a more normal range — or whether the still-compressed availability triggers another spike if fresh borrow demand returns against a pool that has almost no slack left.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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