Walmart is sending conflicting signals post-earnings. Options traders are the most bullish in a year. Short sellers and the borrow market are heading in the same direction — down.
The gap between those two reads is the story.
The put/call ratio hit 0.662 on August 26. That is the lowest reading in the full 52-week window. It sits 2.69 standard deviations below the 20-day mean of 0.88.
To put that in context: six days before the Q2 print, the PCR was 0.97 — near its most defensive posture of the observed period. The whipsaw has been complete. Hedgers have become call buyers in under a week.
That shift accelerated even as the stock remained under pressure. WMT is down 8.7% on the week and 4.7% over the past month, trading at $104.34. The options market has moved on from the earnings disaster. The price has not fully recovered.
Short sellers are not piling in. SI sits at 0.83% of free float — too low to constitute a primary bearish signal on its own. What matters is the direction: shorts fell roughly 4% over the past week and 17% over the past month.
The borrow market tells the same story. Cost to borrow has collapsed 53% in a week to 0.25%. That is the cheapest borrow on record in recent months. Availability is effectively unlimited at 5,741% of shares on loan — more than 57 shares available for every one currently borrowed.
Borrow demand has evaporated since the earnings drop. Bears are not building positions at these levels.
Ten firms slashed price targets on August 21 — the day after the 9.3% crash. Every one maintained a positive rating. The consensus target now stands near $128, down from roughly $138 before the print. At $104.34, that implies approximately 23% upside to consensus.
Truist was the most aggressive cutter, taking its target from $140 to $114. JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo each moved from $137–$140 down to $120–$125. None downgraded.
The next earnings date is November 19.
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