LCID Borrow Cost Doubles Again as Bears Hold Firm

Lucid Group heads into Q3 with the most extreme short-side setup in its recent history — borrow costs have nearly doubled again in four days, short interest keeps climbing, and the stock is up 29% on the week anyway.

The borrow market has moved from extreme to historic. Cost to borrow closed June at 148%, up from 78% flagged in the prior note just four trading days ago — a doubling in less than a week and a roughly 13-fold increase from the 11% level of late May. Availability, already functionally zero throughout June, finished at 0.04% — one share available for every 2,300 already borrowed. That is not a condition that invites new shorts; it is a condition that punishes existing ones. The ORTEX short score has risen further to 86.4, now ranking in the bottom 1st percentile of the universe on both short score and days-to-cover. FINRA's most recent official settlement data puts days-to-cover at 4.3.

Yet bears are not closing. Short interest reached 21.5% of the free float on June 30, up 18% on the week and up 13% over the past month. That is an active choice to pay 148% annualised to hold a position against a stock that just delivered a 29% weekly gain. The ORTEX short score at 86.4 has risen every single session since June 17 — a ten-day consecutive climb that signals continuous incremental shorting into a closing borrow market. The parallel to note: RIVN rose 16.5% on the week while TSLA added 10.2%, suggesting the EV sector broadly caught a bid — but LCID's 29% move stands well above its peers.

Options positioning has also hardened. The put/call ratio moved to 1.42 on June 30, close to two standard deviations above its 20-day average of 1.31, and at the highest level in that window. That is the market buying downside protection despite — or perhaps because of — the rally. The 52-week PCR range runs from 0.10 to 2.42, so the current reading is not yet at structural extremes, but the direction of the past week is clear: options traders are not chasing the move long.

The Street offers little cover for bulls. The consensus remains a sell, with the only recent analyst action being Citigroup trimming its target to $14 from $17 in mid-May while keeping a Buy — a move that looks stale against a stock now trading at $6.69. Most other firms are clustered at Hold or Neutral with targets in the $7–$14 range, all set before the recent rally. The bull case rests on the Uber partnership, a robotaxi potential, and a liquidity runway; the bear case is simpler — execution has repeatedly disappointed, guidance has been suspended, and dilution risk remains real. Insider activity in June was uniformly on the sell side: the acting CEO, acting CFO, and CFO all sold small tranches in early June at prices well below current levels, with significance scores of 1 across the board.

With Q2 earnings due August 5, the next material test is whether the production and delivery numbers justify what the market has just paid for the stock — and whether shorts, paying 148% to stay in, decide to blink before that print arrives.