SNAP enters the back half of June with its sharpest divergence in weeks: options traders have turned dramatically more defensive even as the short-selling community quietly covers, creating an unusual split in how the market is leaning.
The options picture is the most charged signal right now. The put/call ratio jumped to 0.34 on June 23 — nearly four standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.28, and the highest defensive reading the ratio has produced relative to recent norms. That z-score of 3.9 is striking; for context, the PCR has traded in an exceptionally tight band for most of the past six weeks, rarely straying from 0.27–0.28, which makes Tuesday's spike stand out sharply. At 0.34 the reading is still well below the 52-week high of 0.57, so this isn't peak fear — but the sudden departure from a stable baseline suggests traders bought puts aggressively into a stock already down 14% on the week and 22% over the past month, closing at $4.46.
Short interest tells a less alarming story. Bears have been trimming, not adding. Short interest as a percentage of free float eased to 6.9%, down from roughly 7.5% in mid-May and off a recent peak above 8% near the end of that month. The 30-day decline of about 7.6% in shares short represents a meaningful reduction in conviction from the bear camp. Borrow conditions reinforce that picture: the cost to borrow fell sharply to 0.25% on June 23, down more than 40% week-on-week, and availability is extremely loose at 877% — meaning the lending pool holds nearly nine times as many shares as are currently borrowed. There is no squeeze pressure here, and no scarcity premium for borrow. Shorts who remain are carrying positions cheaply, and the ease of borrow means new shorts face no structural friction.
The Street remains broadly cautious, though with some internal disagreement on degree. Following Q1 results in early May, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and RBC all trimmed targets while holding their existing ratings — Goldman to $7, JPM to $6, RBC to $8. Wells Fargo moved the other way, nudging its target up to $7 while staying at Equal-Weight. Only BMO Capital has a meaningfully bullish target still on the table at $15 — a level that looks hard to square with a $4.46 stock, and which likely reflects a more optimistic long-term thesis rather than near-term catalysts. The consensus mean target of $7.58 implies substantial upside from current levels, though the stock has consistently failed to hold those levels. The analyst recommendations factor score ranks in the 94th percentile, reflecting that the analyst community's aggregate skew is more positive than most peers — yet the stock continues to drift lower, a gap worth noting. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed to 6.5x, down roughly 2.5% over 30 days, while the price-to-book ratio has fallen to 3.0x, off nearly 0.8 turns over the same period.
Insider activity has been uniformly one-directional, and consistently so. Co-founder and Executive Director Robert Murphy sold 343,945 shares for just over $2 million on May 29. The CFO sold across two consecutive days in mid-May, clearing roughly $1.35 million in aggregate. The General Counsel sold twice, and Chief Level Officer Ajit Mohan sold on both May 18 and again on June 16 at $5.58. The 90-day net insider position is technically positive at roughly 5.9 million net shares, but that figure is inflated by award grants — the cash transactions tell a cleaner story of consistent selling at levels above the current price, by multiple executives across different functions. Tencent remains the largest institutional holder at 14.7% with no reported change. Irenic Capital built a 1.8% stake in Q1 from zero, which stands as the most notable institutional buy in the recent filing cycle.
Snap reports Q2 earnings on August 5. The last two prints produced negative one-day reactions: down 2.1% after Q1 2026 results in May, and down 16% after Q4 2025 results in February. The five-day drift after Q1 was -8.2%, after Q4 -18.2%. That pattern — moderate initial move, larger trailing weakness — is the setup the August print arrives into, with the stock already deep in a downtrend and options traders now paying up for downside protection well ahead of the date. What to watch between now and then is whether short sellers, who have been covering, begin rebuilding positions as the stock approaches what was previously considered support near $4, and whether the put/call ratio normalises or continues to hold elevated.
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