Nebius Group enters the final week of August in a genuinely different configuration than ten days ago — shorts are covering at pace, borrow availability has snapped wider, and options traders have pivoted firmly toward calls, even as the stock has pulled back 4.5% on the week to $209.18.
The borrow story has reversed sharply. Availability, which spent most of August pinned below 10% — at times under 5%, with the lending pool effectively exhausted — has loosened to 43.7%. That is still tight in absolute terms, but it marks a dramatic easing from the near-total lockout that defined the past month. The 52-week trough was 0.6%; the stock spent multiple sessions this August at 4-6% availability. The release valve is clearly open. Short interest has fallen 12.9% on the week to 24.4% of the free float, down from a peak around 63 million shares in early August to roughly 53 million now. Cost to borrow has collapsed in parallel — from 1.77% as recently as August 20 to just 0.81% today, a 54% weekly drop. Shorts are not just covering; the whole lending market is deflating simultaneously. That combination — lower SI, looser availability, cheaper borrow — reads as a coordinated unwind rather than a short squeeze.
Options confirm the shift in sentiment. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.88, well below its 20-day average of 0.93 and running about 1.3 standard deviations below that mean. Over the past month, the PCR ranged as high as 1.3 — a reading associated with heavy put hedging — and has now compressed to near the lower end of the year's range. Calls are in the driving seat. That tilt toward bullish options positioning sits in contrast to the stock's recent price action: NBIS fell 4.3% on Friday and lost 4.5% on the week, even as both the borrow market and options market appear to be pricing in less near-term downside than before.
The Street is broadly constructive but divided on valuation. Citigroup lifted its target to $324 this month, maintaining Buy. Baird initiated with Outperform and a $340 target. Against that, DA Davidson holds Neutral with a $250 target — well below where the stock was trading earlier this month. The consensus mean target is $286.69, roughly 37% above Friday's close, implying the Street sees meaningful upside. Bulls point to the vertically integrated AI infrastructure model, the Microsoft partnership, and momentum in GPU compute demand. Bears flag hyperscaler competition, capital intensity, and residual geopolitical risk from the company's Yandex heritage. EPS momentum scores rank in the 94th and 97th percentiles on 30- and 90-day windows respectively — the company has been beating estimates convincingly — but the forward P/E is deeply negative and EV/EBITDA of 13x relies on out-year estimates.
The institutional flow over the past month tells its own story. Goldman Sachs added 13 million shares in the period, bringing its position to 8.3% of outstanding. Bank of America added nearly 4.7 million shares. Lone Pine and Situational Awareness both built fresh positions. Against that accumulation, the Chairman of the Board and a Director sold a combined roughly $7 million in stock on August 14, at prices between $265 and $278 — meaningfully above Friday's $209 close. Those insider sales look like disciplined profit-taking at the post-earnings peak rather than a change in fundamental view, given the scale of institutional buying happening simultaneously.
The most recent earnings print on August 12 produced a one-day gain of 32% and a five-day gain of 16% — a monster reaction that compressed the short book and drove much of the August volatility now unwinding. The next earnings date is November 12. With shorts now covering, borrow loosening, and options tilting bullish at a lower price level, what matters next is whether the recent covering marks a floor or simply a pause before renewed positioning — and whether NBIS can hold the $200 level as the broader peer group, including IREN (down 15.4% on the week) and CORZ (down 7.3%), continues to give back August gains.
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