The Fidelity U.S. Value ETF (FCUV) on the TSX presents a modestly unusual setup this week: a vanilla Canadian-listed ETF carrying a cost-to-borrow rate that has more than doubled in a week, against a backdrop of near-zero availability data — though that availability reading is nearly nine months stale and should be treated with caution.
Short interest is genuinely minimal. Estimated short positions amount to just 0.06% of the float — roughly 54,000 shares — and that level has collapsed by nearly 80% over the past month. A month ago, shorts held around 260,000 shares; today that figure has been ground down to a fraction of its former size. The week-on-week number is essentially flat, suggesting the unwind has largely run its course rather than still accelerating. At this level, short interest carries no meaningful narrative weight.
The borrow cost picture is more interesting, if puzzling. Cost to borrow has climbed to 1.79% — more than double where it was a week ago, and up around 38% over the past month. For a broad value ETF with near-zero short interest, a CTB at this level is unusual. The most plausible reading is that the small residual short position is concentrated against a thin pool of available shares in the lending market, pushing up the cost for whoever still holds those positions. The ORTEX availability data (last captured in November 2025) showed the lending pool near fully depleted at that point; whether that condition persists is unknown given the data gap, but the CTB spike is consistent with a tight borrow environment.
The ORTEX short score of 27 is low and easing, which aligns with the picture of short sellers retreating. A recent AI note on FCUV flagged a 94% year-to-date decline and a short score of 68 — that data appears to reference a different security entirely, likely a name-collision with the Focus Universal ticker that shares the FCUV symbol on US markets. The TSX-listed Fidelity ETF tells a far more mundane story: the unit price of CAD 27.86 is up 1% on the month, dividends have been paid quarterly at modest levels (CAD 0.05 in June), and valuation data is sparse given the ETF wrapper.
What to watch is whether the cost-to-borrow elevation persists or fades — if the residual short positions continue to be covered, CTB should ease back toward its longer-run level around 1%, and the brief anomaly will close without further incident.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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