3M Company has spent the past week absorbing a fresh Underperform call and a quiet rebuild in short positions. Options traders are now pushing back hard.
Why this matters: Short sellers have been adding exposure since Bernstein's June 10 initiation. Yet the put-call ratio just dropped to its lowest reading in months. Two camps are forming — and the divergence is unusually sharp.
The PCR fell to 0.96 on June 17. That's 2.6 standard deviations below the 20-day mean of 1.26. It is the most bullish options positioning MMM has seen in the current data window.
Traders have been running a heavily put-biased book for months. The 52-week PCR high sits at 1.66. The shift to sub-1.0 is abrupt — and it happened while short sellers were still adding.
That divergence is the story here. Short interest has risen roughly 18.5% over the past week to 1.90% of free float. That's a genuine rebuild. But at under 2% of float, it remains a low absolute level. The borrow market is not stressed — availability is exceptionally loose, with over 518 million shares available to lend.
Bernstein's $131 target implies 18% downside from the current price of $159.23. The call has clearly attracted some short-side interest. SI has climbed from around 8.5 million shares in early June to 10.1 million now.
But the options desk is not buying the bear case — at least not through puts. The sharp PCR compression reads as either active call buying, put liquidation, or both. Earnings are due July 17. That date is close enough to make options positioning meaningful.
The Street remains split. Wells Fargo holds Overweight at $165. Barclays sits at Overweight with a $185 target. RBC Capital counters with Underperform at $133 — almost identical to Bernstein. Citi is neutral at $166. The mean target of $175.56 sits well above spot.
BlackRock added 3.5 million shares in its most recent filing, lifting its stake to 8.2% of the company. JP Morgan Asset Management added just over 1 million shares. D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund known for quant-driven positioning, added 3.5 million shares to reach just above 1% ownership. Those are not trivial moves into a stock under a fresh Underperform initiation.
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