Energy Transfer LP has added another 3% this week to $21.42, closing roughly half the distance to a Street consensus that has been moving in only one direction since Q2 results landed.
The analyst picture is the defining angle this week. Morgan Stanley's Robert Kad raised his target to $25 on August 18 — matching the level already held by Truist Securities and TD Cowen — while maintaining Equal-Weight. That matters because Morgan Stanley was the one measured voice in a chorus of bulls. The gap between MS's cautious rating and its updated $25 target now reads as a reluctant concession to the momentum rather than a conviction call. The mean target across all firms is $24.48, roughly 14% above where the stock closed Tuesday. Every update since earnings has been a raise. Not one cut, not one downgrade. Bulls point to 25% growth in gathering volumes since early 2022, a projected 5% revenue CAGR, and strategic control of Sunoco and USA Compression as the durable competitive moat. Bears — a shrinking group — flag the Q2 free cash flow swing into negative territory and a 19% year-on-year backlog decline as signals that volume strength may be masking softer demand underneath. Factor scores land squarely on the bullish side: EPS momentum ranks in the 84th percentile on a 30-day basis, EPS surprise in the 77th, and the dividend score in the 92nd — underscoring why income-focused positioning has driven so much of the ownership base.
The short and borrow picture remains almost entirely dormant. Short interest holds at 0.76% of free float — effectively unchanged from the collapse reported mid-week after the August 11 print. That is consistent with the narrative in prior notes: this is residual positioning, not a live thesis. Borrow availability is essentially uncapped, with over 465 million shares available to lend against only 26 million currently out. Cost to borrow ticked up to 0.44% on August 18 from a near-zero reading earlier in the week, but the 30-day trend is still deeply lower, down roughly 69%. The ORTEX short score has drifted from 32.6 on August 7 to 30.2 today — a modest easing that reflects the continued unwind. None of this signals squeeze pressure. Options confirm the calm: the put/call ratio is 0.195, barely one standard deviation above its 20-day average of 0.187 and well below the 52-week high of 0.315. The post-earnings defensiveness flagged in earlier notes has fully receded.
Peer flow adds useful context. TRGP led midstream this week with a 12.2% gain, suggesting the sector caught a broader tailwind rather than ET-specific buying. OKE added 6.1% and KMI 4.4%. ET's 3.1% week is actually the softest of the group — which could read as relative underperformance, or simply as a reflection of ET having already moved earlier in the month while peers catch up. Either way, the sector is not a headwind.
Founder Kelcy Warren remains the most prominent insider, holding 307 million shares — nearly 9% of the partnership. His last disclosed purchase cluster came in November 2025 at prices around $16.80, and the stock has since appreciated more than 27%. The only insider activity recorded in the past 90 days is a modest $250,000 open-market buy by an independent director on August 7 at $20.23 — a small but directionally positive signal at a price now clearly below where the stock trades.
The next earnings date is November 4. Until then, the watch points are whether the $21.42 price continues closing on the $24.48 consensus target, how the broader midstream sector digests what has been a sharp August move, and whether Morgan Stanley's equal-weight rating eventually follows its own upgraded target.
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