SE has now been running two conflicting stories for three days. Shorts covered hard after the earnings beat. Analysts raised targets. Yet the options market keeps adding put protection — and that tension is worth watching closely.
Post-earnings upgrades have been swift. Barclays raised its target to $156 from $122 on August 13, maintaining Overweight. Benchmark went further — lifting to $175 from $140. The consensus target now sits at $154.07, roughly 25% above Thursday's close of $123.32.
The options market is not reading from the same script. The put/call ratio hit 0.7544 on August 13. That is 2.6 standard deviations above the 20-day mean of 0.61. Three sessions in a row have now printed above 0.75. Before the earnings print on August 11, the ratio was at 0.58. It has risen sharply every day since.
That is a notable divergence. Analysts are lifting numbers. Options traders are buying more downside protection after an 18% rally in a week.
Short interest fell 35% in the week through August 13, dropping from roughly 19 million shares to 12.3 million. That unwind was covered in the previous ORTEX note published August 12. The position has stayed flat since — 12.2 million on August 12, 12.3 million on August 13.
Borrow availability remains exceptionally loose at 2,270%. There are more than 244 million shares available to lend against 12.3 million currently borrowed. That is not a setup that supports a short squeeze narrative. It simply means the covering wave has run its course and the remaining shorts face no particular pressure from the lending market.
Cost to borrow ticked up 57% over the past week to 0.53%. That sounds sharp in percentage terms. In absolute terms it remains very low — the level classified as "low" in the dataset.
On August 12 — the day after the earnings-driven spike — three insiders sold shares. COO Gang Ye sold across multiple transactions totalling roughly $2.5 million. President Chris Feng sold approximately $889,000. A divisional president sold smaller amounts. All transactions carried a significance score of 2 out of 10, suggesting routine planned sales rather than a directional signal. The 90-day net insider position is actually positive at $15.7 million net bought, so the post-earnings selling does not reverse the longer-term insider trend.
The core tension now is straightforward. Analysts see 25% upside from current levels. Options traders have consistently added put protection through each day of the post-earnings rally. The next earnings date is November 10 — leaving three months for that disagreement to resolve.
Data summary
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