Super Micro Computer posted its strongest single-session gain in months on Thursday — up 10.4% to $30.66 — and for the first time in weeks, the data behind the move shows shorts actively stepping back rather than simply waiting.
The short interest story has genuinely changed since the last note. Prior articles flagged SI building to 13.4% of free float as shorts added conviction into the slide. That position has now unwound: SI has fallen 8.2% on the week to 12.7% of free float, representing roughly 75.6 million shares — the lowest reading in this 30-day window. The retreat tracks across multiple days, with the sharpest decline concentrated in the final sessions of the week. Borrow conditions remain unthreatening for the short side — availability is running at 184% of short interest, well above the 52-week floor of 85%, and cost to borrow holds at just 0.46%. Shorts are covering by choice, not under pressure. That distinction matters: this looks like profit-taking after a successful trade, not a forced squeeze.
Options positioning has flipped with equal speed. The previous three notes flagged a put/call ratio running more than two standard deviations above its 20-day mean — a reading that preceded each successive leg lower. This week the ratio closed at 0.66, now sitting two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.72. That is the most call-heavy positioning of the past year, near the 52-week low of 0.59. The contrast with three weeks ago is stark. Traders who were paying up for downside protection have rotated toward calls — either hedging short exposure or expressing directional conviction on the recovery. Combined with the short covering, the options shift represents the clearest two-sided confirmation of a sentiment change this stock has seen in 2026.
The Street remains cautious, but there are signs of incremental thawing. The consensus holds at hold, with Wolfe Research initiating at Peer Perform on June 11 — the most recent analyst action and a signal that fresh coverage is being established at neutral rather than negative. Mizuho raised its target to $44 in early June, the second consecutive upward revision. Most other major firms — JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays — cluster in the $31–$34 range after raising targets post-earnings in early May. At $30.66 the stock trades near the bottom of that consensus band, which explains some of the covering logic: the short thesis priced in the legal and supply-chain concerns, and the stock has now settled into fair value territory by most neutral-to-cautious targets. The EV/EBITDA multiple at roughly 7x and PE near 10.7x reflect the earnings recovery narrative — cheap relative to AI infrastructure peers, but encumbered by a Piotroski F-Score of 2 and negative free cash flow, which keeps quality-oriented buyers sidelined.
The earnings backdrop reinforces why the short thesis ran as far as it did — and why covering here carries real risk. The last quarterly print on May 5 produced a 24% single-day gain, and the stock held most of it over the following week. Next results are due August 4. The bull case — strong hyperscale and datacenter demand, AI server positioning, improving gross margins — still relies on SMCI executing through its supply constraints and resolving outstanding legal issues before that date. The bear case, shared by the majority of the Street, is that those headwinds are not fully resolved and declining average selling prices could erode margins even as volumes recover. The gap between those two outcomes is wide enough that neither side is obviously wrong, which is precisely why 75 million shares remain short even after the week's covering.
DELL gained 4.6% on the week and NTAP slipped modestly, while HPE added 1.3% — the infrastructure cohort continues to recover, closing some of the performance gap SMCI had opened up on the downside. Whether the Thursday bounce represents the start of SMCI rejoining that recovery, or a short-covering rally into unchanged fundamentals, is the question the August 4 print will determine.
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Super Micro Computer has now lost 45% of its value in 2026, and the most striking development this week is not the continued selling — it's that the Street has largely stopped arguing about direction. The options…
Super Micro Computer has shed another 28% this week to $29.22 — extending a brutal run that has now erased roughly 45% of the stock's value in 2026 — and the options market, which called the last leg down, is flashing…
