Macerich heads into the final week of June with a striking reversal of the setup described just days ago: the options market has flipped from its most defensive posture of the year to its most bullish, analysts are lifting targets in a wave, and short interest has climbed back sharply — all at the same time.
The most dramatic shift is in options positioning. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.46, more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.79 — and that reading is also the lowest of the past 52 weeks. A week ago this note flagged a PCR near 1.0 as the most defensive reading of the year. The swing is abrupt: from June 15-18, the PCR sat above 1.0 on four consecutive days; by June 22-23 it had halved. Call buyers have overwhelmed put buyers, and the scale of the move suggests this is directional activity, not a routine unwind of hedges.
The analyst community appears to be driving the demand. The Street has delivered a concentrated burst of upgrades and target increases over the past week. Citigroup upgraded MAC to Buy from Neutral on June 24, raising its target to $28. Truist lifted its target from $20 to $26 the same day while keeping its Buy. JP Morgan upgraded the stock from Underweight to Neutral on June 17, moving its target to $25. Morgan Stanley and Scotiabank both raised targets on June 18. Deutsche Bank upgraded to Buy from Hold earlier this month, moving to $27. Targets across the group now cluster in the $25-$30 range, and the consensus mean price target of $25.06 sits modestly above the current price of $24.39 — though Ladenburg Thalmann's $30 target and Goldman Sachs's standing Sell with a $19 target mark the outer bounds of the debate. Goldman's bear case is the lone outlier in a field that has moved decisively more constructive.
Short interest, though, is moving the other way. After the sharp drop to 5.8% of float documented in the June 17 note, short interest has rebuilt aggressively — up 95% over the past month and now running at 9.3% of the free float, roughly 23.9 million shares. That is the highest level in the 30-day window and represents a gain of 11.5% in a single week. The rebuilding started sharply around June 16, the same session the PCR also began to turn. The borrow market does not yet reflect stress: cost to borrow is just 0.44%, flat on the week, and availability is ample at around 416% of short interest — meaning there are roughly four shares available in the lending pool for every one already borrowed. Shorts can add easily at current prices. The short score has climbed to 59.1, up from 44.8 two weeks ago, consistent with the rebuild in positioned shares.
The combination is genuinely unusual. Analysts are upgrading and option call buyers are piling in, while a separate cohort of investors is simultaneously rebuilding a short position now back above 9% of float. The factor scores add some texture: analyst recommendation divergence ranks in the 94th percentile of the universe — a sign the Street is more split than usual even as the net direction of recent changes is positive. EPS surprise ranks at 78 and forward EPS growth at 85, both respectable. But short score ranks in only the 8th percentile, meaning MAC's short positioning is among the most elevated in the universe by ORTEX metrics. Institutional holders are well-anchored — BlackRock holds 15.5% of shares and FMR 8.9%, with CenterSquare adding over 1.4 million shares recently — providing a stable ownership base beneath the activity.
Recent earnings prints offer limited directional signal: MAC fell about 1.2% the day after Q1 results in June and about 0.6% after the May print, though both recovered over the subsequent five days with gains of 3.9% and 2.2% respectively. The next earnings event is August 5. With shorts rebuilding at pace, options pricing the most bullish outcome in a year, and the analyst community stacking upgrades, the August print has become a clearer focus point — and the gap between the call buyers' implied conviction and the shorts' equally firm conviction will narrow one way or another.
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