SL Green Realty enters August with a rare tension: the stock is up 5.2% on the week and analysts are racing to lift targets, yet short interest remains stubbornly elevated at nearly 15% of the free float — leaving a large bearish cohort sitting on paper losses as the price pushes toward $55.81.
The analyst community has turned decidedly more constructive in a compressed window. Every recent action has been a target raise, with no downgrades in sight. Scotiabank lifted its target to $60 this week, while Citigroup moved from $45 to $60 and Piper Sandler made the most aggressive call — raising to $79 from $65 — all within the past two weeks. Morgan Stanley, maintaining its cautious Equal-Weight stance, still moved from $36 to $52. The direction of travel is clear: even the bears are chasing the tape higher. The mean target across the coverage sits at $54.83, which at this point sits marginally below the current price — a sign the stock has outrun consensus faster than analysts can update their models. The bull case rests on premium Midtown occupancy running well below the broader market and management's forecast of more than 10% year-over-year same-store NOI growth in 2027. Bears counter with the 2025 normalized FFOps decline of around 12.8% and the persistent drag from leasing capital and interest expense.
Short interest tells a strikingly different story from the analyst enthusiasm. At 14.7% of the free float — roughly 10.4 million shares — the short position has barely moved this week, trimming just 0.4% in five sessions after a more meaningful 4.9% reduction over the past month. The ORTEX short score has held in a tight band around 71 for the past two weeks, ranking in the 2nd percentile of the universe — meaning almost every other stock scores less bearish. Days-to-cover comes in at over 11 on the official FINRA data, a wide cushion that makes any rapid short-covering dynamic difficult to execute. This is a structurally bearish position, not a nimble tactical short.
Borrow conditions offer little fuel for a squeeze. Availability is running at 223% — meaning there are more than twice as many shares available to lend as there are shares currently borrowed — and cost to borrow has eased to around 0.51%, down roughly 12% on the week and near its lowest level since June. That compares to a reading closer to 0.9% in late June. The tightest the borrow market has been over the past year was in late June, when availability fell to 131% — still loose by historical standards. For now, the lending pool is well supplied, and new shorts can establish positions cheaply. The options market reflects no particular urgency from either camp. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.95, below its 20-day average of 1.05, which itself had been elevated through most of July. That recent shift away from puts tracks closely with the post-earnings price move and the wave of analyst upgrades.
On the ownership side, BlackRock holds the largest institutional stake at just under 19% of shares, adding modestly in the June quarter. Cohen & Steers, a core REIT active manager, reported a meaningful build to 5.2% of shares in the March quarter — the most recent filing available. The insider picture leans the other way. CEO Marc Holliday sold $4.7 million of stock in late June near $50.65, and the CFO sold alongside him on the same day. The company's total insider net over the past 90 days shows net selling of approximately $12.4 million. These were at prices well below today's level, so the losses to sellers are real, but the directional message from management has been consistently to trim.
Earnings are next scheduled for October 21. The most recent print — July 22-23 — produced a one-day move of nearly 9% and a five-day follow-through of almost 7%, the catalyst that appears to have reset the analyst community's assumptions and triggered this month's wave of target increases. With the stock now running above several revised targets and the short position barely flinching, the next watchpoint is whether the 14%-plus float-short cohort begins to cover in size as Q3 leasing data and NOI updates emerge ahead of October results.
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