EWW, the iShares MSCI Mexico ETF, enters the back half of July with bears growing more committed — short interest has climbed nearly 60% over the past month while borrowing costs have almost doubled, a combination that points to a meaningful shift in how the market is positioned against Mexican equities.
The short interest story is the dominant signal here. Short interest now runs at 11.7% of the free float — up 4.5% on the week and up nearly 59% over the past month, from roughly 2.15 million shares shorted in mid-June to 3.4 million today. That's not a marginal repositioning; it's a sustained and accelerating build. The ORTEX short score has drifted up alongside it, reaching 69.5 — its highest point in the 10-day window visible here and up from 67.1 two weeks ago. The score alone doesn't tell the story, but it confirms the direction: bearish pressure has been building steadily, not spiking.
The lending market reinforces that picture. Availability has tightened sharply — it now sits at just under 20%, down from roughly 64% in mid-June, meaning there are fewer than two shares available to borrow for every ten already lent out. That's well inside territory that signals genuine demand pressure in the lending pool. Cost to borrow has followed: it hit 4.42% on Tuesday, up 18% on the week and up nearly 80% over the past month. The 52-week tightest point was reached on July 8th, when availability dropped to 13.5% — the lending market has eased slightly from that extreme but remains far from loose. Borrowers are paying materially more to hold a short position in this ETF than they were six weeks ago.
Options positioning tells a quieter story by contrast. The put/call ratio is essentially flat at 1.01, fractionally below its 20-day average of 1.03 — a z-score of -0.66. After the highly elevated readings seen in early-to-mid June (PCR above 1.3 and peaking around 1.42 in mid-June), options positioning has normalised considerably. That June spike in put demand has faded. Bears appear to be expressing conviction through the lending market rather than the options market right now.
On the institutional side, the most notable Q1 move in the holders list was BTG Pactual Asset Management — a Brazil-headquartered firm — entering a new position of 511,000 shares. Morgan Stanley added 274,000 shares in the same period. UBS Asset Management trimmed by 324,000 shares. These are 13F snapshots from March 31 and don't capture more recent positioning, but the BTG entry is worth noting: a Latin American asset manager building exposure to a Mexico ETF while short sellers pile in creates an interesting cross-current. Analyst data for this ETF is effectively absent — the most recent price target on file is more than 18 years old and carries no weight.
The stock itself has been relatively calm amid this positioning shift. EWW closed at $75.84, up about 1% on the day and up 0.7% on the week, though it remains down roughly 2% over the past month. The ETF does not have upcoming earnings to act as a near-term catalyst, but the macro calendar around Mexico — US trade policy, nearshoring data flows, peso moves — will be the variables that either validate or unwind the short build. The gap between the tightening borrow market and the relatively stable price is the tension worth watching.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open EWW 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.
