Coinbase Global enters the second week of September with a sharply changed short picture — bears added aggressively while the Street split on valuation, leaving the stock caught between fresh analyst optimism and accelerating negative positioning.
The short interest move this week is the most striking data point. Bears pushed exposure up 29.5% in a single week, taking short interest to 12.4% of free float — 28.3 million shares. That is the highest reading in the 30-day window by a wide margin, and it reverses what had been a broadly stable short book that hovered between 21 and 23 million shares for most of August. The jump came in one session: September 10 showed a near-30% single-day increase versus the prior day's 21.8 million. Short interest is now above where it sat in early August, when COIN was trading closer to $190. The ORTEX short score jumped to 58.7 on September 10, its highest reading in the recent series, up from a steady mid-50s range throughout August and early September.
The lending market offers no friction to new shorts. Availability stands at 353% — three and a half shares remain available to borrow for every one already on loan. That is tighter than the 416% reading from September 2, but still well within normal territory. Cost to borrow is 0.40%, up roughly 34% on the week, yet still negligible in absolute terms. The borrow market has been between 0.30% and 0.48% for six consecutive weeks. There is no squeeze mechanism in place: shorts can build freely, and the recent volume jump in short interest confirms they are doing exactly that.
The analyst backdrop is where the story gets complicated. Morgan Stanley initiated coverage this week at Equal-Weight with a $250 target — a notable arrival for a bellwether firm, and a target well above the stock's $172 close. Goldman Sachs separately raised its target to $219 from $196, maintaining its Buy. Those two moves push the mean price target to $199 and suggest a Street consensus that sees 15-16% upside from current levels. Yet the consensus tells only part of the story. After COIN's July 30 earnings print — which sent the stock down 8.6% in a day and 9.2% over five days — a cluster of analysts trimmed targets: Cantor cut from $250 to $184, Goldman went from $198 to $173, Oppenheimer from $209 to $193. The subsequent recovery back toward $190 in August, and the latest round of target lifts, suggests those post-earnings cuts are being partially reversed. The bull case rests on 108 million users, expanding prime brokerage, and derivatives platform growth. The bear case is blunter: trading-fee concentration, regulatory exposure, and a PE multiple of 133x that leaves no margin for earnings disappointment.
Factor scores reinforce the tension. EPS surprise and 30-day EPS momentum both rank in the 98th percentile — the company has been consistently beating near-term estimates. But 90-day EPS momentum sits at the 1st percentile, meaning the direction of forward revisions has been sharply down over a longer horizon. Short score ranks in just the 15th percentile, reflecting elevated bears relative to peers. The EV/EBITDA multiple at 19.8x has compressed roughly 6% over 30 days, a gentle re-rating downward that fits the post-earnings narrative.
Peers moved in the opposite direction this week, which sharpens the COIN underperformance. HOOD gained 5.9% on the week. SBET added 4.1%. BULL rose 3.3%. COIN fell 10.6% over the same period. That divergence — crypto-adjacent names rising while Coinbase falls — sits uneasily with the bull case that COIN benefits from broader digital-asset momentum. Insider activity adds little conviction either way: director sales by Marc Andreessen and Fred Wilson this month were all conducted under pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans, making them a mechanical signal rather than a discretionary read on outlook.
The next focus is whether the September 10 short-interest spike marks a one-session repositioning or the start of a new build, and how Morgan Stanley's fresh Equal-Weight framing — constructive target, neutral rating — lands with institutional desks currently assessing whether COIN's post-earnings discount is an entry or a value trap.
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