MARA reports Q1 results tomorrow — June 18 — with the borrow market continuing to ease even as short interest stays near cycle highs, and options traders leaning more bullish than at any point in the past year.
Since yesterday's earnings preview, availability has loosened further. It now stands at 48% of short interest — up from 42% the day before, and a dramatic reversal from mid-May when zero shares remained available to borrow. That three-week swing, from a fully exhausted lending pool to nearly half of short interest sitting unborrowed, reflects genuine easing in squeeze pressure. Cost to borrow has actually fallen to 0.55% — down from 0.79% yesterday — making borrowing cheap even as short interest itself remains elevated at 24.8% of the free float. The short base has barely moved: roughly 93.8 million shares short, down just under 1% on the day and only marginally lower over the week. Positioning is heavy but not tightening — which is a different setup from what bears were working with a month ago.
Options are sending the clearest bullish signal in the data. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.74, more than 2.4 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.77 — the most call-skewed reading in the past year, with the 52-week low PCR at 0.65 as the only lower reading on record. That tells you options traders are actively reaching for upside exposure into tomorrow's print, not hedging against it.
The Street remains split. BTIG reiterated Buy with a $27 target as recently as June 1. Morgan Stanley, though, cut its Underweight target from $8.50 to $7 in mid-May — the most bearish live target among active coverage. Rosenblatt raised its Buy target to $15 from $11 at the start of May, closer to where the stock actually trades at $14.42. The mean analyst target of $17.57 implies modest upside from current levels, though the range between $7 and $27 reflects genuine disagreement about whether MARA's pivot toward HPC and Long Ridge Energy integration will deliver. The EPS surprise factor score at the 93rd percentile suggests the company has a strong recent track record of beating estimates, though the last print on May 11 saw the stock fall 1.7% on the day and 5.9% over the subsequent five sessions.
Insider activity has run one direction all year. The CEO, CFO, and General Counsel each sold shares in mid-April, again on April 30, and again on May 18 — consistent, programmatic selling at prices between $11.46 and $12.00. The net 90-day insider flow adds up to a modest net positive in share terms, but that appears to reflect option exercises rather than open-market buying. BlackRock holds 15.7% of shares and added 1.2 million shares in the most recent reported period, providing some passive anchor to the register.
The question tomorrow is less about whether short interest is elevated — it demonstrably is, and has been for weeks — and more about whether the earnings print gives either the 25% short base or the call-heavy options crowd the catalyst they need to move.
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