MDV has snapped back to a fully exhausted borrow market after a brief window of relief last week — and with earnings less than three weeks away, the squeeze dynamic has reset to its most extreme level.
The brief easing noted in the September 7 note has now fully reversed. Availability has dropped to 0%, meaning every share in the lending pool is currently lent out — the tightest the borrow market has been since the start of September, when zero readings dominated for several consecutive sessions. That flicker of relief, when availability reached 6.1% on September 4, lasted less than a week before collapsing again. Cost to borrow is running at 13.8% annually — broadly unchanged from last week's note but still firmly elevated for a Warsaw-listed retail name. Shorts are locked in and new entrants face a near-impossible entry. The ORTEX short score has inched higher to 91.2, the highest reading in the current run and one that places MDV in the extreme upper tail of bearishly positioned names across the platform.
Short interest remains deeply dug in at 20.8% of free float. That figure has barely moved across the past two months of notes, which itself tells a story: bears are not covering, but they cannot meaningfully add either. The stock closed at PLN 86, down 2.2% on the day and off 6.4% over the past month — gradual but steady erosion that is financing short sellers' carry costs at 13.8% and keeping the trade profitable enough to hold. Among the closest correlated peers, on the Warsaw exchange fell 3.3% on the week, while dropped 8.1% — broader weakness in the fashion retail space that provides no relief to MDV bulls.
The institutional picture adds nuance to the bearish positioning. Goldman Sachs holds 5.9% of shares as last reported in June, and Nationale-Nederlanden added significantly to its position earlier this year, bringing its stake to 8.3%. Those are not the footprints of a stock entirely abandoned by institutional capital — yet the combined weight of 20.8% short interest against a borrow market at zero suggests that conviction on both sides remains high. The deputy chairman Karol Półtorak made modest open-market purchases in early July at PLN 102–103, a level now well above where the stock trades. Those buys look premature at current prices but signal some insider confidence in a longer-term case.
Earnings on October 1 are the next obvious focal point. The last print, in August, knocked the stock 7.4% in a single session and left it 6.6% lower five days later. The June print went the other way — up 11% on the day and 24.5% over the following week. That volatility pattern, combined with a borrow market at zero and short interest near a fifth of the float, makes the October release a genuinely binary event for positioning. Whether shorts use any pre-earnings liquidity window to reduce exposure, or hold through the print, will determine whether the next availability reading looks anything like the brief 6.1% window seen on September 4 — or stays pinned at zero.
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