The Trade Desk enters the final week before its August 7 results with a modest but meaningful shift in short positioning — bears added to their bets over the past week even as the stock slipped another 3% to $19.12.
Short interest has climbed to 17% of the free float, up roughly 3% on the week after sitting near 16.6% when the last note was filed on July 8. The absolute level — around 75 million shares — has bounced off the mid-June highs near 77 million but remains genuinely elevated, well above the year's lows. The borrow market continues to tell a different story. Availability has actually loosened sharply, jumping 24% on the week to nearly 1,900% — meaning there are roughly nineteen shares available to borrow for every one currently shorted. Cost to borrow has drifted lower too, now at just 0.33%, down 13% over the past month. These two data points together confirm what last week's note said: the short position is large, but not stressed. There is no squeeze dynamic here. Options traders remain skewed toward calls, with the put/call ratio at 0.46 — right at the low end of its 52-week range of 0.43 to 0.93 — and barely a half-standard-deviation below its 20-day average. That is not a hedging posture; it reflects continued call-side demand even as the stock drifts lower.
The Street is broadly bullish in direction but losing conviction on price. UBS analyst Stephen Ju lowered his target from $31 to $28 on July 13 while keeping a Buy. That came days after HSBC upgraded from Reduce to Hold with a $20 target — a move that sets a floor near current levels but barely qualifies as constructive. Across the broader analyst cohort the pattern since the May earnings miss has been uniform: targets cut, ratings held. The mean target of $24.32 implies roughly 27% upside from $19.12, but most of that gap opened up because the stock fell faster than targets were revised. The bull case rests on CTV growth, Fortune 500 client depth, and a strong balance sheet. Bears point to Q2 revenue growth of just 8%, heavy AI and data-centre investment dragging margins, and real competitive risk in fragmented ad tech. Factor scores add texture: forward EPS growth ranks in the 89th percentile — a genuine long-term build — but near-term EPS surprise ranks only in the 25th percentile, and short-score rank sits in the 17th. The ORTEX short score itself is steady at 53.3, mid-range and barely moving over the past ten sessions.
The institutional register shows one noteworthy move. State Street added nearly 14 million shares in the period ending June 30, lifting its stake to 9.6% of the company — a significant accumulation at prices that look to have averaged somewhere in the low-to-mid twenties. BlackRock added modestly too. Founder and CEO Jeffrey Green holds 10.4% and made no changes. On the insider side, the recent activity is limited to routine director and executive sales in May at prices around $21, all low-significance disposals rather than any concentrated signal.
Recent earnings history is worth keeping front of mind. The May print produced an 8% drop on the day and a further 15% over the following five trading sessions. The preceding quarter also triggered a negative single-day move. With the August 7 report now three weeks away, the setup — elevated short interest, loose borrow, call-skewed options, analyst targets above the current price but falling — will define how the next print is received.
The August 7 earnings release is the clearest near-term reference point: the question is whether a reacceleration in revenue growth can narrow the gap between where analyst targets sit and where the stock is actually trading.
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