HACK, the Amplify Cybersecurity ETF, has posted one of its stronger stretches of recent months — up 7.9% on the week and 6.6% over the past month — yet the options market has quietly rotated from near-pure bullishness into something more balanced.
The most striking development this week is in options positioning. Through most of July, the put/call ratio ran well below 0.5 — deeply skewed toward calls, reflecting strong directional conviction in the sector's rally. That reading has since reversed sharply. The PCR closed Tuesday at 1.08, almost exactly at its 20-day mean of 0.98 and well above the sub-0.50 territory that persisted for most of the prior six weeks. The 52-week high sits at 1.25, hit on July 24, meaning options traders briefly approached their most defensive posture of the year before pulling back slightly. The shift is modest in z-score terms — barely 0.3 standard deviations above the recent mean — but the directional change from extreme bullishness to neutral-to-cautious is notable given the fund's continued price strength.
The borrow market tells a different story. Short interest in HACK is genuinely low — just over 1% of the float — and is on a falling trend over the week even as Tuesday showed a one-day uptick. Borrowing costs are cheap, running below 1% annually, and availability has loosened sharply. After tightening to its 52-week low in early July (availability dropped to roughly 39%), the lending pool has reopened. Availability now registers at 132%, meaning substantially more shares are available to borrow than are currently shorted. The contrast with the July 3 squeeze in the lending pool — when availability hit the floor and the borrow market was fully tapped — is marked. There is no meaningful pressure in the short book right now.
The ORTEX short score of 46.5 is middling and has edged lower over the past week from near 48. That reading reflects the combination of low-but-recently-growing short interest, loose borrow conditions, and a fund that has been rallying. Nothing in the short-side data suggests the cybersecurity trade is under structural attack from bears. As a recent ORTEX note flagged, HACK's holdings have been supported by elevated enterprise security budgets and solid revenue growth from major constituents — zero-trust architecture and cloud security demand remain the underlying tailwind.
The shift worth watching is whether the options pivot from extreme call-skew to near-neutral PCR marks a pause in the directional rally, or simply reflects profit-taking on expiring call positions after a strong run. The July 24 PCR peak at 1.25 — the year's highest — arriving precisely as the fund touched recent price highs will be the reference point if the broader cybersecurity theme hits a speed bump.
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