SPCX has now traded through two earnings events in as many days, gained 9.4% on August 4 and another 9.4% on August 5 to reach $125.33 — and the short base has barely moved.
The positioning story remains the defining feature of this stock. Short interest climbed again to 220 million shares on August 4, up 3% on the day and up roughly 7.5% on the week. That is more than 800% above where it stood a month ago, and the bears who built those positions through July are now sitting on roughly a 23% loss against the pre-earnings close. The borrow market has tightened further: availability dropped to 0.35% on August 4, a new all-time floor for SPCX and down more than 90% in a single week. For every share remaining available to borrow, approximately 288 are already lent out. Cost to borrow has risen to 6.46%, up 38% on the week and nearly eight times its late-June level. The ORTEX short score reached 70.7, the highest reading since listing, climbing every session this week. Bears are paying more, losing money, and have not blinked across two consecutive positive prints.
Options positioning offers a mild divergence from that aggression. The put/call ratio eased to 0.88 on August 4, fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.93 and roughly 0.6 standard deviations softer than the mean. That is the continuation of a pattern flagged in prior reports: options traders have quietly tilted toward calls even as short interest has climbed. The PCR has not retouched the defensively elevated readings above 1.0 seen in mid-July. The two signals are pulling in different directions — options lean mildly constructive, short positioning remains maximally bearish.
The Street is moving in cautious increments following the prints. Wells Fargo trimmed its target to $215 from $230 today while keeping its Overweight rating. Piper Sandler cut to $140 from $156, maintaining Neutral. Macquarie and Needham both held at $250 with Outperform and Buy respectively. Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated Overweight at $246. The mean target is $228, implying roughly 82% upside from current levels — a gap that reflects genuine disagreement rather than a straightforward buy signal. Bulls point to the vertically integrated platform, steady government contract growth, and Starship milestones as the earnings story; bears cite fixed-price contract exposure, execution risk on next-generation systems, and high customer concentration as the structural headwinds. Elon Musk holds 46% of shares, keeping the free float narrow and the borrow market structurally constrained regardless of directional sentiment.
Ownership data reinforces how thin the tradeable float actually is. Beyond Musk's 46%, Valor Management holds another 3.8%, and FMR has been adding, increasing its stake by 52 million shares to 166 million as of June 30. With insiders and early institutional holders controlling the majority of shares, the 220 million shares currently short represent an enormous claim on a structurally limited lending pool — which is precisely why availability has collapsed to its floor.
The next question for this setup is whether the continued price recovery prompts any covering at all, or whether the 220-million share short base continues to hold through a stock that has now reclaimed $125. The next scheduled earnings event is November 5.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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