ExxonMobil enters the final stretch before its July 31 Q2 earnings print with a notable reversal in short positioning — the most significant change since last week's note documented bears retreating.
Short interest has rebuilt at a pace that demands attention. After touching a 90-day low of 0.98% of the free float just days ago, SI jumped 33% in a single session on July 7 to 58.5 million shares, pushing the float percentage back to 1.39%. The weekly change is nearly 33%, and the one-month increase now stands at 45%. That is a sharp directional reversal from the steady compression story told in last week's note — bears who had been unwinding into the earnings catalyst appear to have re-entered, or new shorts have been initiated. The move is worth flagging explicitly: last week's headline was "shorts retreating," this week's data says something different.
The lending market tells the more nuanced half of that story, though. Despite the jump in shares short, availability remains extraordinarily loose — the pool holds roughly 4 billion shares available to borrow, with availability at over 9,000% relative to short interest. Cost to borrow has barely moved, running at 0.35% APR — historically low for any name, let alone one with a meaningful one-month SI build. That combination makes the SI spike look less like a borrow-constrained squeeze setup and more like a tactical re-entry at a higher price after the stock gained 3.6% on the week to $141.69. Options lean the other way. The put/call ratio sits at 0.66, slightly below its 20-day average of 0.71 and well off the elevated defensive readings near 0.84 and 0.86 seen in early June. Options traders remain skewed toward calls, diverging from the short-side rebuild.
The Street backdrop provides some context for both camps. Analysts hold a buy consensus across seven coverage firms as of July 7, with bulls citing Permian scale and the Liza project in Guyana as long-duration growth drivers. Bears counter with a concrete near-term headwind: full Middle East operational outages have been blamed for an 11% cut to 2026 EPS estimates, lower refinery utilization across segments, and elevated feedstock risk. The forward EPS growth picture has, however, improved dramatically — analyst targets now sit materially above the current $141.69 print, having widened from roughly 9% implied upside at the start of the year to over 24% by late June, per the ORTEX stock score note published last week. The short score edged up to 32.1 from 29.4 ten days ago, but remains low in absolute terms.
The energy sector moved broadly in sympathy this week. Closest peer CVX gained 3.3% on the week, while COP and OXY outperformed at 4.1% and 5.3% respectively. XOM's 3.6% weekly gain tracked the group but lagged the more pure-play E&P names — consistent with its integrated profile absorbing some of the refining headwinds that peers without downstream exposure can avoid.
With Q2 results confirmed for July 31, the focus narrows to whether the EPS recovery from the Middle East outage comes through as expected, and whether the short re-entry of the past 48 hours represents a genuine thesis shift or a short-lived tactical trade against the recent price rally.
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