PNQI has settled into a new short-interest regime — but the lending market continues to loosen, removing the friction that briefly made this ETF's bearish build interesting.
The standout development this week is how much the borrow environment has relaxed since the August 13 note. Cost to borrow collapsed from 1.22% to 0.80% — a 33% drop in one week. Just three weeks ago CTB briefly touched 4.6% on July 31. That spike is now firmly in the rear-view mirror. Availability has also improved, climbing from 188% to 177% on the latest reading, though it had already widened back toward comfortable territory earlier in the week (touching 251% on August 6). The lending pool is not tight by any measure — nearly two shares remain available for every one borrowed, against a 52-week tightest reading of 39%.
Short interest itself has stabilised rather than accelerated. Borrowed shares sit at approximately 289,000, representing 2.0% of free float — essentially unchanged from the 285,000 reported on August 12. The weekly change is nominally 98% in headline terms, but that comparison flatters the move: the jump occurred over the August 11 weekend when borrowed shares stepped from roughly 146,000 to 285,000. Since then, the position has barely moved. The 30-day change remains extraordinary at over 1,700%, reflecting the July base of near-zero. But the velocity that defined the prior five weeks has clearly stalled. The ORTEX short score has crept up to 56.4 from 47.9 on August 10 — a moderate reading, reflecting the higher absolute level of short interest rather than any fresh squeeze dynamic.
Options traders remain unimpressed by the bearish case. The put/call ratio is running at 0.14, slightly above its 20-day average of 0.13 and about 1.7 standard deviations elevated — but in absolute terms, calls still outnumber puts by roughly seven to one. The broader options market for this ETF is thinly traded, so the PCR reading carries limited interpretive weight. The price itself is cooperating with the call-heavy positioning: PNQI dipped 2.1% on the week to $50.87 but is up 5% over the past month, tracking the broader recovery in NASDAQ internet names.
The picture that emerges is one of positioning that has matured rather than intensified. Shorts built aggressively through mid-August, borrow costs spiked and then retreated, and the lending market has since reabsorbed the demand comfortably. What to watch now is whether the short position begins unwinding — a sustained decline in borrowed shares back toward the 150,000 level would signal the hedging thesis has run its course — or whether a fresh catalyst in the underlying internet complex prompts another leg of accumulation.
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