EWA dropped 3.3% on the week to $28.02, but the real story is what happened in the options market on Tuesday — a single-day spike that puts this ETF firmly on watch.
Options positioning turned dramatically more defensive at Tuesday's close. The put/call ratio hit 10.02, more than four standard deviations above its 20-day average of 1.86. That makes it the second-highest reading of the past year, eclipsed only by a 12.77 PCR that sits as the 52-week peak. For context, the PCR had been running in a narrow 1.27–1.41 band for the preceding three weeks. Tuesday's print was a sharp departure — someone loaded up on downside protection in size.
The lending market tells a more nuanced story. Short interest is actually easing. It fell 8.5% on Tuesday alone and is now down 41% from a month ago, landing at 6.3% of the free float. Borrow costs have followed: the cost to borrow has eased to 2.95%, the lowest reading in the 30-day window after touching 4.45% in mid-June. Availability has opened up sharply too — it loosened from 60% last Monday to 88% by Tuesday, a near-reversal of the squeeze conditions that gripped the fund through much of May and early June. Back then, availability dropped to 0.13% on May 19, the tightest point of the year, when the lending pool was essentially fully drained. That stress has now largely unwound, even as the ETF itself continues to drift lower.
The institutional ownership picture adds an interesting layer. At the end of March, Morgan Stanley added 1.15 million shares, UBS Asset Management added just over a million, and JP Morgan Asset Management built a near-fresh 748,000-share position. Those are meaningful inflows from large-balance-sheet names into what is a relatively small ETF. Against that, HSBC Global Asset Management trimmed over 1.3 million shares in the same quarter — the largest single reduction among top holders. The net institutional picture through March was constructive, but that was before the recent string of weekly losses.
The ORTEX short score sits at 60.1, in a range that has oscillated between 51.5 and 62.3 over the past ten sessions. It peaked on June 11 and has come off its highs as short interest unwound, but it remains elevated relative to earlier in the month. The most recent dividend — $0.40 per share, payable June 15 — provides a modest income anchor, but the currency component is worth noting: EWA's performance is tied directly to AUD/USD moves, and any renewed dollar strength would pressure the fund independently of what Australian equities do.
The next thing to watch is whether Tuesday's PCR spike was a one-day anomaly or the start of a sustained repositioning toward downside hedging — and whether the easing in borrow availability continues to hold even as the price slides.
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