Short sellers showed no sign of easing off heading into the July 4 holiday. Wolfspeed remains the most extreme name in the market. Short interest hit 114.9% of free float. Share availability is effectively zero. Cost to borrow sits at 9.6%. CoreWeave saw short interest jump 7.4 points in seven days to 28.4% of free float. Bears are questioning whether its AI infrastructure growth justifies the valuation. Hertz shorts also piled in, with SI jumping 11 points to 48.4%. Availability there is gone too.
Analysts disagree sharply on US airlines. BMO Capital raised its Delta Air Lines target to $105, maintaining an Outperform rating. That follows conflicting calls on Southwest, where Goldman Sachs and BMO both lifted targets but from different bases. Meanwhile, short sellers are pressing budget carriers. and both saw bearish options flow pick up this week.
C-suite selling dominated filings this week. Six Applied Materials insiders filed combined sales of over $113M. Alibaba president J. Michael Evans filed a $65.8M sale on July 1. Silver Lake's exit from Dell topped $874M across five filings.
European defense stocks gained after Ukraine ratified a $105bn EU loan deal. Franco-German tank maker KNDS postponed its IPO after investors pushed back on its €12bn-plus valuation. Hedge funds including Millennium and Point72 posted double-digit first-half returns. Micro-mobility firm Lime debuted after raising $167M in its IPO, backed by Uber.
PepsiCo headlines next week's earnings calendar on July 8. Levi Strauss and Helen of Troy also report. Volume will be light ahead of the US holiday.
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.
