SPMO, the Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF, pulls into September with an interesting internal contradiction: short interest has jumped sharply over the past month yet the options market has shifted notably more bullish over the same period.
The positioning picture is the most interesting thing about SPMO this week. Short interest climbed 64% in a single week to roughly 888,000 shares, or about 0.83% of float — still a low absolute level, but the pace of that build is worth noting. A month ago the short position was 30% smaller. That said, the lending market tells a very different story: availability is extraordinarily loose, running at over 1,400% of short interest, meaning there are roughly fourteen shares available to borrow for every one already lent out. Cost to borrow is a negligible 0.56%. The borrow market is not signalling any stress. Shorts have added quietly, not urgently.
Options positioning has moved in the opposite direction from the short sellers. The put/call ratio is running slightly below its 20-day average — 0.55 versus a mean of 0.60 — a mild tilt toward calls rather than puts. The z-score of -0.66 suggests the current reading is a fraction below the recent norm, not extreme in either direction. What is notable is the direction of travel: through late July and early August the PCR was running above 0.65, consistent with defensive hedging. That has dropped away sharply through the final week of August, suggesting that whatever macro anxiety drove the hedging demand has eased. The 52-week range on the PCR stretches from 0.14 to 0.93, so the current 0.55 sits in comfortable middle ground.
The ORTEX short score of 29.2 sits in the lower tier of the universe — consistent with the low absolute short interest and ample availability. There are no factor scores or analyst data available for an ETF wrapper, which is expected. Valuation multiples are not applicable. The fund's relevant metric is its mandate: holding the highest-momentum names in the S&P 500, which has served it well — SPMO is up roughly 1.2% over the past month, outpacing a week that saw a 1.3% pullback from recent highs.
Institutional ownership data shows a broad range of wealth-management platforms — Morgan Stanley, Raymond James, Envestnet, Wells Fargo, and others — all carrying or adding shares through the June quarter. Several smaller RIA platforms increased positions materially, with Performance Wealth Partners adding nearly 558,000 shares and Mirae Asset adding close to 800,000. That kind of broad-based RIA accumulation reflects SPMO's role as a tactical allocation tool rather than a speculative vehicle, which makes the recent short-interest spike more curious. Whether it represents hedging by existing holders or a directional bet against momentum-factor persistence is impossible to determine from position data alone.
The stock ended September 1 at $145.54, down 1.05% on the day. The week's short build, the softening put/call ratio, and September's historically choppy seasonality for momentum factors are the three threads worth tracking as the month opens.
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