PLTR Short Sellers Keep Retreating as Earnings Clock Ticks Down

Palantir Technologies enters the final stretch before its August 3 earnings print with short sellers continuing their retreat — but the stock has given up more ground than the bears have.

The short interest story has moved decisively since prior notes flagged the peak. SI hit 4.15% of free float on July 15, the highest reading in at least a year, and has now fallen to 3.71% — a near 7% drop on the week. In absolute shares, the position has unwound from 90.9 million to 84.7 million over eight trading days. That is a genuine reversal, not merely a pause. The bears who spent April through mid-July systematically doubling their position are now trimming, and the timing is notable: they are reducing exposure into a 7.1% weekly price decline to $122.92 rather than into a rally. The borrow market adds no drama to that picture. Cost to borrow has fallen another 32% on the week to just 0.36%, and availability remains extraordinarily loose at over 9,300% of short interest — roughly 1.6 billion shares available against 84.7 million borrowed. There is no squeeze pressure and no sign of crowding in the lending pool.

Options positioning tells a similarly flat story. The put/call ratio is running at 0.95, almost exactly in line with its 20-day average of 0.95 and a z-score of essentially zero. Neither bulls nor bears are paying up for directional exposure through the options market ahead of earnings. The 52-week range on the PCR runs from 0.61 to 1.16, which makes the current reading firmly mid-range — nothing about the options market signals conviction in either direction right now.

On the Street, the most recent move came from Citigroup's Tyler Radke, who on July 24 trimmed his price target from $225 to $200 while maintaining a Buy rating. That is a meaningful cut — 11% off a target that was itself already well above where the stock trades — and it lands less than two weeks before the print. Broader analyst sentiment has been mixed. DA Davidson upgraded to Buy earlier in July with a $175 target. Wedbush and Rosenblatt hold targets at $230 and $225 respectively. RBC remains the outlier bear, holding an Underperform with a $90 target. The consensus sits at Hold, with the mean price target around $185 — implying roughly 50% upside from current levels, though the stock's rich multiples (PE near 67x, EV/EBITDA near 49x) make that math complicated. Bulls point to Palantir's structural positioning in government AI and its accelerating commercial revenue. Bears flag valuation, geopolitical exposure, and the limited voting rights that constrain outside shareholder influence.

Insider activity this month has been uniformly one-directional. CTO Shyam Sankar sold $24 million worth of stock on July 2 at $130. Independent Director Alex Moore added further tranches on July 15 at prices between $133 and $137. The selling is not dramatic relative to the company's scale, and the trade significance scores are low, but the direction is consistent: insiders are lightening into the same price band where short sellers were previously building.

The last two earnings prints offer useful context for the setup. The May 4 Q1 result triggered a 5.7% decline the following day and a further 5% over the subsequent week. The June 3 event — a special presentation — produced a steeper 6.9% one-day drop and a 14.4% five-day loss. Both instances saw the stock fall, suggesting the options market's neutral stance may be underpricing the event risk that prior reactions implied. Peer performance this week reinforces the sector-wide softness: ZETA fell 11.8%, IOT dropped 13.6%, and NOW gave up 4.3%, so PLTR's 7.1% decline fits a broader de-rating rather than a stock-specific breakdown.

The August 3 print is now the single variable that matters — specifically whether revenue acceleration and AI contract wins can justify a multiple that even the most bullish Street targets struggle to fully support at current prices.