Apollo Bulls Take Charge Into Thursday's Print

Apollo Global Management reports Q2 results on July 31 with options traders making their most bullish bet of the past year — a striking divergence from the cautious analyst tone that dominated mid-July.

The clearest signal heading into the print is in options positioning. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.67, nearly three standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.77 — and the lowest reading in the past 52 weeks. That is an unusually aggressive tilt toward call exposure, suggesting options traders are positioning for upside rather than hedging against a miss. The stock has reinforced that bullish lean, climbing 5% on the week and 5% for the month to close at $124.24, a steady grind higher rather than a speculative spike.

Short interest adds a less dramatic subplot. Bears hold roughly 4.9% of the free float — moderate for a large alternative asset manager — and that position has been gently unwinding, down about 3% on the month even as it ticked up slightly in the final week of July. Borrow conditions give shorts no particular edge: availability is extremely loose at around 700%, meaning shares are abundant to borrow, and the cost to borrow is just 0.44%. The ORTEX short score of 52, essentially neutral, confirms there is no squeeze dynamic building here.

The analyst community is more divided than the options market implies. Morgan Stanley trimmed its target by a dollar to $164 last week while holding its Overweight rating — a cosmetic cut that changes little. HSBC initiated with Buy at $145 this month, adding a fresh constructive voice. More cautious were RBC Capital and BMO Capital, both of which cut targets materially on July 13 — RBC to $137, BMO to $126, just above the current price. The mean target across the Street sits near $148, implying roughly 19% upside from current levels. Bulls point to record retirement services inflows of $17.2 billion and a strong deployment pipeline as the structural growth case. Bears flag the downward revision to 2025 Retirement Services revenue growth — from around 9.5% to mid-single digits — and competitive pressure in the retail channel that could shave margins. Capital Research, the largest institutional holder, added nearly 10 million shares as of June 30, a meaningful vote of confidence heading into the report.

Past earnings prints have been muted in one direction. The May 2026 release produced a one-day decline of about 2%, though the stock recovered to flat over the following five days. The June print reversed that, gaining nearly 4% on the day and extending to 6% over a week. Thursday's report will test whether Apollo's private credit deployment and retirement flows have held their pace through a quarter shaped by shifting rate expectations — and whether the record inflows story can offset the bear case on compressed SRE growth.