Short sellers are piling into GDXJ even as junior gold miners rally. The borrow market tells the story: availability has collapsed to 8.5%, and the cost to borrow has surged more than tenfold in a week.
Availability stood at 9.6% on June 24. It is now 8.5% — and the 52-week low on record is 1.35%.
Every share in the lending pool is already lent out. With only one borrowable share remaining for every twelve already borrowed, new short positions are expensive to establish and difficult to scale.
The cost to borrow reflects that pressure. It hit 1.17% on July 1, up from 0.10% on June 24. That is a 1,115% rise in a single week. Bears betting against junior miners are paying sharply more for the privilege.
Bearish positioning has climbed alongside borrow costs. SI reached 11.3% of free float on July 1. That is the highest reading since late May.
A week ago, short interest was closer to 10%. Over the past month, it has risen 25.8%. The direction is clear: more traders are betting against the ETF even as it trades near $98.
The ORTEX short score sits at 66.6 — consistent with sustained bearish positioning rather than a single-day spike.
GDXJ rose 2.1% over the past week. Junior miners have benefited from the broader gold rally. Yet the short side is building, not retreating.
Bears appear unconvinced the rally has legs. The 1-month price change is –17.8%, which gives context: despite this week's bounce, GDXJ remains well below where it traded a month ago. That drawdown may be reinforcing the short thesis for some traders.
The options market is not flashing alarm. The put/call ratio sits at 0.73, roughly in line with its 20-day average of 0.73. Options traders are not adding fuel to the bearish fire — at least not yet.
Availability is the key variable. At 8.5%, it remains very tight, and the 52-week low of 1.35% shows how much further it could squeeze. If availability tightens further, cost to borrow will likely follow — raising the break-even bar for new shorts and potentially forcing some to cover.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open GDXJ on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
