IGPT, the Invesco AI and Next Gen Software ETF, enters the back half of July with a quiet but notable tension: short interest has tripled over the past month while the borrow market has tightened sharply — even as the fund's options market stays firmly bullish.
The most striking development in the lending market is the speed of the reversal. Availability has dropped from a near-limitless 1,095% at the start of July to just 142% today — meaning lenders have gone from sitting on a vast surplus of shares to having only modest excess supply in less than two weeks. Short interest itself climbed from roughly 68,000 shares in late June to around 208,000 today, a three-month jump of 205% that has pushed the SI reading to 1.9% of the free float. That is still a low absolute level for an ETF — nothing close to a squeeze setup — but the velocity of the build is worth noting. Cost to borrow has eased from a June peak near 4.4% to around 2.3%, so while the lending pool has tightened, the rate has not spiked. That combination — more shares borrowed, cheaper to borrow, but less availability — reflects a one-sided demand pickup rather than a supply shock.
The ORTEX short score tells the same directional story. It has risen from 31 at the start of July to 49 this week — effectively moving from the lower half of the neutral range to the midpoint of the scale in ten trading days. A score of 49 is not a bearish extreme, but the pace of the climb is faster than typical for an ETF of this kind, where short activity is usually structural rather than tactical.
Options positioning contradicts the short-side activity almost entirely. The put/call ratio is 0.04, barely above its 20-day average of 0.037 and near the 52-week floor of 0.019. That means options traders are overwhelmingly expressing views through calls rather than puts — the opposite of what you would expect if the short buildup reflected genuine conviction on the downside. The z-score is essentially flat at 0.11, signalling no unusual shift in options sentiment. The ETF closed at $96.37, up about 1.9% on the day and 1.8% on the week, recouping most of a 0.9% monthly dip. The AI-software thematic behind the fund remains well-bid: recent notes point to positive earnings revisions across top semiconductor and cloud holdings, with several analysts raising growth forecasts out to 2027.
Institutional ownership data (reported through March 2026) shows the largest holders are wealth-channel intermediaries — UBS Asset Management at 6%, LPL Financial near 4%, and Morgan Stanley at roughly 4%. HighTower Advisors added the most aggressively in the last reported quarter, building a new position of 284,654 shares. These are buy-and-hold advisory flows, not the kind of active positioning that would explain a sudden short buildup. That mismatch deepens the puzzle: the short interest is rising tactically, but the natural owners of the fund are not signalling any concern.
What to watch in the coming days: whether availability continues to compress below 100% — the level at which the borrow market genuinely becomes constrained — and whether the short score breaks decisively above 50, which would move it from neutral into territory where bearish positioning begins to look more intentional than incidental.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open IGPT 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.
