TSLL Borrow Market Hits Near-Zero as Short Interest Jumps 24%

The lending market for TSLL — Direxion's 2X leveraged daily Tesla bull ETF — has reached an extreme. Availability has collapsed to 0.12%, meaning roughly one share remains available to borrow for every 800 already lent out. At the same time, short interest has surged 24% in a single week.

The Borrow Squeeze in Numbers

Availability was sitting above 9% as recently as July 13. It has since fallen in a near-straight line: 9.4% → 2.5% → 1.7% → 1.2% → 0.27% → 0.17% → 0.14% → 0.12%.

That rate of tightening is fast even by leveraged-ETF standards.

Cost to borrow has followed. It stood at 3.78% on July 14. By July 22 it had reached 6.26% — a 64% rise in one week.

The 52-week low availability on record sits at 0.03%. TSLL is now approaching that floor.

Short Interest Keeps Building

SI % of free float has climbed from around 6.4% a month ago to 9.2% today — a 44% rise over 30 days. The one-week jump of 24% is the sharpest single-week move in the dataset.

More shares are being shorted into a pool where almost nothing is left to borrow. That combination — rising demand, near-zero supply — is what has driven the cost-to-borrow spike.

The ORTEX short score currently sits at 67.2, up from 61.3 just two weeks ago on July 9. It has risen every single session in that window.

Options Tell the Opposite Story

Here the picture splits. The put-call ratio on July 22 was 0.41 — the lowest in at least two weeks and a full two standard deviations below the 20-day mean of 0.50 (z-score: -2.07).

Options traders are buying calls, not puts. That sits in tension with the lending-market signals. For a 2X leveraged bull ETF, call buying is consistent with traders positioning for upside in Tesla's underlying stock, even as a separate set of market participants crowds into short positions and exhausts the borrow pool.

These two signals are not necessarily contradictory — different actors, different timeframes — but the divergence is worth noting.

What to Watch

• Data summary:
  • Short interest: 9.16% of free float (Jul 22), +24% in 1 week, +44% in 1 month
  • Cost to borrow: 6.26%, +64% week-on-week
  • Availability: 0.12% — near the 52-week low of 0.03%
  • Put-call ratio: 0.41, z-score -2.07 vs 20-day mean
  • ORTEX short score: 67.2, up from 61.3 two weeks ago
  • Price: $10.96 (Jul 22), -10.3% on the week, -16.7% over the month

The key level is the 52-week availability low of 0.03%. If the borrow pool tightens further, new short positions become very difficult to establish — and covering any existing ones back into thin supply adds to the complexity.