Rocket Lab is down 30% over the past month to $95.12, and the short rebuild flagged in last week's note has not paused — it has accelerated, even as options traders have quietly retreated from the extreme bullishness they displayed a week ago.
Short interest has now climbed to 7.0% of free float, up 16.5% on the week — the fastest weekly rate of accumulation in this data window and a meaningful step up from the 6.1% reading in the previous note. The total short position now stands near 37.1 million shares, adding roughly 4.8 million shares in a single week. That is a continuation and an intensification of the rebuild that was already underway. The critical change from a week ago: the lending market, which was already loose, has tightened sharply. Availability has dropped to 571% from around 965% a week prior — a 41% fall in seven days. That still puts the borrow in comfortable territory, but the direction is unambiguous, and the 52-week low for availability is 118%. Cost to borrow has risen 36% on the week to 0.52%. Still cheap in absolute terms, but the rate of change is worth watching: every week for the past month has seen the borrow become fractionally more expensive. The ORTEX short score has moved to 44.9, up from 38.9 two weeks ago — consistent with a position that is building rather than topping out.
Options positioning has shifted since last week's note, and the contrast with the previous read is worth naming explicitly. A week ago the put/call ratio was at 0.69, more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average — an extreme call skew. That call enthusiasm has faded. The PCR has climbed back to 0.77, essentially in line with its 20-day mean of 0.76, with a z-score near zero. Options traders have moved from outright bullish to neutral. The 52-week high on the PCR is 0.85, so there is room for further defensive rotation, but for now the call-heavy positioning that was diverging sharply from short interest has largely normalised. Both signals are now pointing in the same cautious direction, rather than pulling against each other.
Insider selling provides additional context. The General Counsel sold 88,000 shares on June 18 for roughly $9.5 million at $107.98 — a price already well above where the stock trades today. A director sold 40,000 shares on June 2 at $123.60. The COO sold multiple tranches in late May near $143-150. Net insider activity over 90 days is technically positive in share count, but the headline 90-day net value of ~$50 million in sales reflects steady distribution by management at prices 50-60% above current levels. That context doesn't imply anything directional, but it does mean insiders have been sellers throughout the decline rather than buyers stepping in to signal conviction at lower levels.
The sector-wide selloff adds a further layer. Close peers LUNR and FLY are both down 18-19% on the week — roughly double RKLB's own 9% weekly fall — while RDW is off 18%. The entire small-cap aerospace and launch cohort is being repriced. RKLB's relative outperformance within the group is consistent with its stronger institutional sponsorship — BlackRock added nearly 5 million shares as of end-May, and multiple passive managers show recent inflows — but the sector direction is working against all of them. Q1 earnings in May triggered an 11% one-day gain and a 24% five-day rally; the next print is scheduled for August 6, which frames the next potential catalyst. Between now and then, the question is whether the short rebuild continues to push SI toward the 52-week high territory, or whether the stock finds a floor that draws covering ahead of results.
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