RDVT Heads Into Earnings With Bulls In Control

Red Violet reports after the close tomorrow with options traders positioned about as bullishly as they have been all year — a striking contrast to a stock that has quietly shed short interest over the past month.

The clearest positioning signal is in the options market. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.054, nearly at its 52-week low of 0.054 and well below the 20-day average of 0.094. That means calls outnumber puts by roughly 18 to 1 — an unusually one-sided lean into the print. The ratio had been running closer to 0.17 through most of July before dropping sharply in late July, suggesting a deliberate shift toward bullish exposure as the earnings date approached.

Short interest tells a complementary story. Bears have been quietly reducing exposure. Short interest as a percentage of the free float fell roughly 7% over the past month to 5.7% of the float, with nearly all of that reduction coming in the July 7–23 window when shorts were most actively covering. The borrow market offers no squeeze catalyst: availability is extraordinarily loose at nearly 1,949% — meaning there are approximately 19 shares available to borrow for every one already shorted — and cost to borrow runs at just 0.5%. Nothing in the lending market pressures bears to exit; they appear to be leaving voluntarily.

The analyst backdrop sharpened meaningfully just last week. B. Riley Securities raised its price target from $65 to $81 on July 30, while maintaining its Buy rating — a 25% target lift that puts the new target well above the consensus mean of $71.50. At $68.28, the stock trades at a modest discount to that consensus, leaving implied upside of around 5% to the average target and roughly 19% to B. Riley's revised figure. The bull case centers on Red Violet's data analytics and identity intelligence platform scaling efficiently, with the 5-year EBIT CAGR reportedly swinging sharply positive following recent earnings updates. The bear angle is more structural: the stock has re-rated considerably over the past year, and the ORTEX sector score — which measures relative standing among software peers — has compressed from near 91 in late spring to around 36 now, suggesting the stock has lost ground versus comparables like DDOG and OTEX, which gained 15% and 7% respectively over the past week while RDVT added less than 1%.

The insider picture adds a layer of caution. The CEO, CFO, and President all sold shares on June 1 at prices around $57, collectively offloading over $2.6 million worth of stock — with the stock now trading roughly 20% above those sale prices. The sales carried low trade significance scores, pointing to routine plan-driven disposals rather than a fundamental signal, but they do note that leadership monetised near what were then multi-month highs. Tomorrow's print will test whether the platform's revenue trajectory and margin profile justify both the stock's re-rating above insider sale prices and the bullish options posture that has built into the release.