HOOD heads into its July 29 earnings print with short sellers adding pressure for a second consecutive week, even as analysts continue to raise targets above the current price.
Short interest has climbed sharply. It rose another 11.5% over the past week to reach 5.0% of the free float — a level last seen in late May and now up more than 21% over the past month. The move is consistent across the recent history: from roughly 32.5 million shares short in mid-May, the position has grown to nearly 39.5 million. Notably, that rebuilding is happening without any distress in the lending market. Availability remains extremely loose at roughly 1,157% — meaning there are more than eleven times as many shares available to borrow as there are currently short — and the cost to borrow has actually eased, falling around 14% on the week to just 0.44%. Shorts face no friction adding here. The ORTEX short score has drifted steadily higher over the past two weeks, reaching 37.9 from 35.9 — still a moderate reading, not a flashing red signal, but a trend worth tracking.
Options positioning is calm by contrast. The put/call ratio edged up to 0.63 on Tuesday, fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.64 and well within normal range. At a z-score of -0.38, options traders are neither particularly defensive nor unusually bullish — a notably quiet setup given the short interest build. The 52-week range for the PCR runs from 0.56 to 0.74, and the current reading sits toward the lower end, which is mildly call-skewed relative to the full-year window.
The Street remains firmly bullish, and the pace of upgrades accelerated further this week. Goldman Sachs lifted its target to $121 from $108 on Monday, and Deutsche Bank raised to $113 from $105 the same day — both maintaining Buy. Those follow BTIG's fresh Buy initiation at $125 last Thursday. The consensus mean target now sits near $105, slightly above the $100.28 close, though Citizens' outlier $155 target skews the average. Valuation has re-rated meaningfully: the trailing PE sits at 38x, up more than 7 turns over the past 30 days, and price-to-book has expanded to 8x. The 94th-percentile analyst recommendation dispersion factor score flags that the Street's bullish conviction is unusually concentrated — a reading that has been sharpening quickly even as 90-day EPS momentum remains a more pedestrian 21st percentile.
Insider activity adds a conflicting note. Founder Baiju Bhatt sold roughly 57,500 shares across multiple tranches on June 11, collectively worth around $4.2 million at prices between $86.50 and $93.20. CFO Shiv Verma sold a smaller $394,000 on June 15. These are routine in size relative to Bhatt's 55 million share position, but the direction is the same as the shorts. On the other side, Ribbit Capital — a longtime venture backer with board representation — stepped in on June 5 and bought 250,000 shares for just over $20 million at $80.74, a meaningful single-ticket purchase that reads as a conviction top-up near support.
Earnings history deserves attention heading into July 29. The last two quarterly prints both produced sharp negative reactions: the stock fell 15.2% the day after the April 28 results, and dropped 8.7% on the June 2 print. The five-day moves were also negative in both cases, at -8.2% and -7.7% respectively. HOOD has posted back-to-back double-digit post-earnings drops. With short sellers still adding exposure at the current pace, and the borrow market posing no barrier to further position-building, what happens between now and July 29 — and whether this week's analyst target lifts translate into actual estimate revisions ahead of the print — will determine whether the shorts or the Street proves right.
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