Moderna has now added 20% in a single week and 54% over the past month — yet the short base has barely moved, and the bears who built positions at much lower prices are still holding.
The central tension is familiar but has sharpened. Short interest ticked down fractionally to 15.4% of the free float as of July 1, off the 16.33% peak flagged in last week's note. That marginal easing is not a retreat. Roughly 60 million shares remain borrowed — the same mountain of short conviction that was in place when the stock was trading at $47. The ORTEX short score has actually eased slightly this week, falling to 69.3 from 71 at its recent peak, but it remains elevated and places Moderna in the bottom 12th percentile on short-score rank versus the broader universe. Days-to-cover on the official FINRA count still sits at 10.5 — any forced unwind clears slowly.
The lending market continues to argue against a near-term squeeze. Availability is running at 277% — loosening from the tighter 229% level recorded just a week ago, and comfortably above its 52-week floor of 196%. Cost to borrow is 0.49%, barely changed over the period and firmly in "cheap to borrow" territory. Shorts face no friction. They can add, hold, or cover at will. Options positioning has nudged slightly more defensive, with the put/call ratio at 0.95 — modestly above its 20-day average of 0.91 and sitting about 1.3 standard deviations rich on the z-score — but it's not an extreme reading. The options market is cautious, not alarmed.
The Street remains structurally divided, and the stock has now blown through the consensus price target. The mean analyst target is $45.85, well below the current $72.50 print — a gap that reflects how quickly the stock has re-rated relative to formal Street estimates. The most recent move came from Piper Sandler on June 26, lifting its target to $77 while maintaining Overweight, making it the only major firm with a target above the current price. Bank of America, maintaining Underperform, raised its target only to $34 — less than half the current level. Goldman Sachs and UBS both sit at Neutral with targets in the $45-$49 range. The bull case rests on the breadth of the mRNA platform — oncology, cardiovascular, rare disease — and the validation effect of COVID vaccine success. The bear case is clinical: 35 development candidates carry enormous execution risk, the CMV vaccine stumbled, and the revenue base remains dependent on products that haven't yet proven themselves commercially. With the stock now trading at roughly 60% above the mean target, the near-term price action is being driven by something the analyst models haven't fully incorporated.
Institutional positioning adds one notable data point. FMR (Fidelity) added 17.6 million shares as of April 30, taking its stake to 11.5% of the company — the largest single addition among top holders by a wide margin. Capital Research added nearly 5.9 million shares through May. These are not small tilts. The insider picture is less constructive: President Stephen Hoge sold $2.7 million worth of shares on June 15, and the CFO and Chief Legal Officer both sold smaller parcels earlier in June, though these were accompanied by routine award grants. The 90-day net insider position is technically positive in share count but weighted by awards, not open-market purchases.
Earnings are confirmed for August 6. The last two prints produced same-day gains of roughly 3-4% and five-day follow-through of 8-18% — so the recent pattern has rewarded longs into results, not punished them. With the stock up 54% in a month, the question going into August is whether the rally has already priced in the optimistic scenario, or whether a clean Q2 print and pipeline update can extend it further — and whether the bears, now sitting on losses that have compounded sharply, finally blink.
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