Hut 8 Corp. heads into its August 4 earnings report with short sellers pulling back sharply, analysts chasing the stock higher, and options markets signalling a more bullish tilt than they've shown all summer.
The analyst activity this week tells a particularly striking story. Benchmark's Mark Palmer raised his target to $195 — from $165 just days earlier, and from $85 back in mid-July — reflecting how quickly conviction has built among the stock's bulls. Needham lifted its target to $145 from $128 on Monday. The consensus now sits at $140, roughly 28% above the current price of $108.98, though Palmer's $195 is the furthest outlier. All recent changes have been upward moves on already-bullish ratings. No analyst in the recent changes list holds a neutral or negative view. The Street is not divided on direction — it is divided only on how far the run can go.
Short positioning has retreated significantly, and the withdrawal is one of the cleanest trends in the data. Short interest has fallen 22% over the past month, dropping from around 16 million shares in mid-June to just under 12.5 million now — equivalent to 11.5% of the free float. That is still a meaningful short book, but the direction is unambiguously toward cover. The lending market reinforces this read: availability has expanded dramatically, to roughly 1,092% of current short interest, up 34% on the week alone. With nearly 48.5 million shares available to borrow versus 12.5 million borrowed, there is no squeeze pressure at all — shorts who want to stay short have ample access to stock. Cost to borrow has eased about 24% over the past week to just 0.52%, a level that implies no premium demand for borrows. The short score — ORTEX's composite bearish-positioning metric — has dipped to around 51 from 53 earlier in the month, consistent with the unwinding story.
Options are telling the same bullish tale. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.53, about 1.4 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.57, and is approaching the low end of its 52-week range. A year ago the PCR hit 0.79; the current reading is closer to the 52-week floor of 0.31. Calls are running heavy relative to recent norms, reflecting either outright bullish bets or position hedging by traders who are already long.
The ownership picture adds texture. Lone Pine Capital entered the register with a full new position of roughly 6.1 million shares as of March quarter-end, and Vanguard funds collectively added material new exposure in the same period. BlackRock and T. Rowe Price both added on a more recent reporting date through June. Coatue Management, with 9.1 million shares at around 8.1% of the company, remains the largest institutional holder by percentage. On the insider side, the Chief Legal Officer sold $1.25 million of stock at $125 in mid-June — a price above current levels — and a director sold around $1.8 million across several transactions in the same week. These are not alarming in scale relative to the company's capitalization, but both occurred at prices higher than today's close.
The earnings track record sharpens the picture heading into August 4. The last two prints produced next-day gains of 12.5% and 25.7% respectively, with five-day follow-through of 17.8% and 34.5%. The five-day peer moves on the week tell a broadly supportive sector story: CORZ added 8.7%, RIOT gained 6.4%, and CIFR led the group with a 15.2% advance — suggesting Bitcoin sentiment is lifting the whole cohort rather than HUT outrunning its peers on idiosyncratic news. The key question heading into August 4 is whether Hut 8's operational and HPC progress can justify the targets now clustering between $145 and $195 — and whether the short book, still at 11.5% of float, offers additional fuel if the print repeats the pattern.
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