ARES heads into the back half of August with a striking split: short sellers are abandoning positions at the fastest pace in months, while options traders are quietly loading up on downside protection.
The short-side retreat is the week's most concrete story. Short interest has dropped 15.6% over the past week to 6.3% of the free float — the sharpest weekly decline in the 30-day window — continuing a broader unwind that has trimmed positions by roughly 14% over the past month. The bulk of that move appears tied to a single-session jump on August 10, when shares outstanding short fell from around 16.3 million to 13.5 million in one day. Borrow conditions reinforce the read: cost to borrow is a low 0.65%, down about 9% on the week, and availability is generous at 272% — well above the 52-week floor of 237%. There is no squeeze pressure here; the borrow market is relaxed and shorts are choosing to exit on their own terms.
Options traders are pulling in the opposite direction. The put/call ratio has climbed to 1.47, running well above its 20-day average of 1.28 and sitting nearly 1.8 standard deviations above that mean. That marks the most defensive options posture on ARES in at least a month. The PCR has drifted steadily higher since mid-July, when it was closer to 1.06. Whether that reflects hedging against the 11.6% one-month rally in the stock or genuine bearish conviction is the open question — but the direction of travel is unambiguous.
The Street, however, remains broadly constructive. After the July 31 earnings print — which sent the stock up 11.6% in a day and a further 10.3% over five sessions — a cluster of analysts raised targets in early August. JP Morgan lifted its target from $143 to $153, maintaining Overweight; TD Cowen moved from $153 to $155 on a Buy; and RBC Capital pushed its Outperform target to $168 from $162. Only BMO sits at Market Perform, with a $134 target now below the current price of $140.31. The mean target of $146.50 implies modest upside from here. Bulls point to Ares's leadership in private credit, strong institutional fundraising, and 12-month forward EPS growth ranked in the top 10% of its universe. Bears flag the time it takes for newer platform bets — data centre and digital infrastructure — to show up in earnings, and the general competitive intensity across the alt-asset space. Forward EPS 12-month growth ranks 90th percentile; EPS surprise ranks a weaker 22nd, suggesting the Street keeps underestimating medium-term growth while occasionally missing nearer-term beats.
Institutional ownership tells a structurally stable story. Ares Owners Holdings — the insider entity — holds 47% of shares. BlackRock, Vanguard, and Capital Research collectively account for another 20%. Wellington added roughly 1.2 million shares in the most recent reporting period, the largest change among major external holders. There were notable CEO and Executive Director sales in late June — Michael Arougheti and Robert DeVeer each sold roughly $9.2 million of stock at around $111 — but those trades came at prices well below where the stock trades today, so they look more like scheduled liquidity events than reads on the near-term setup.
The ORTEX short score has eased to 56.5 from a recent high of 61.9 on August 7, reflecting the unwinding of short positions. The next earnings event is scheduled for October 30. Between now and then, the tension worth tracking is whether put buyers at current levels are hedging a stock that has already run hard off its lows, or whether the options market is picking up something the short-side exit is missing — because right now those two crowds are pointing in very different directions.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open ARES on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
