Rezolve AI enters the week of September 17 with its borrow market partially unwound from last week's spike — but short interest has barely flinched, and the October earnings date is drawing closer.
The clearest shift from last week's note is in borrowing costs. Cost to borrow peaked at 71.8% on September 9 before collapsing back to 26.9% by September 16 — a 63% drop on the week. That reversal sounds dramatic, but it follows an equally dramatic spike that had no obvious fundamental catalyst. The normalisation brings CTB back to mid-August territory, not to the loose conditions of late July. More telling is what didn't move: short interest held almost exactly flat on the week, inching up just 2.3% to 41.0 million shares, or 13.6% of the free float. That is a position 18% larger than a month ago. Bears paid elevated borrow rates during the spike and are still here after rates came down. The CTB volatility looks like a supply disruption, not a conviction change.
Availability tells a similar story of lingering tightness. At 26.1% of shares borrowed, roughly one share remains available for every four already lent out — well below the normal range and only modestly improved from the 19.5% reading flagged in last week's note. The 52-week low touched 0.07%, so there is headroom lower, but the trend has been grinding tighter since late August rather than recovering meaningfully. Options positioning offers a slight counterpoint: the put/call ratio has drifted down to 0.24, marginally below its 20-day average of 0.27 and sitting well below the 52-week high of 0.33 hit in late August. Call activity is proportionally larger than put activity — a muted bullish lean in options that stands in contrast to the weight of the short book.
The ORTEX short score, which combines borrow tightness, short interest trend and availability into a single ranking, has climbed to 79.0 — its highest reading in the data window and up from 74.5 at the start of September. That puts RZLV in the most bearish short-positioning decile of the universe, consistent with the factor scores: utilization rank is in the 7th percentile and DTC rank in the 15th. The growth factor score of 90 (per the recent stock score note) is doing most of the work keeping the combined score from being outright negative — quality and value scores remain deeply depressed, reflecting a company still burning cash at significant scale.
The ownership picture carries a notable development. CEO Daniel Wagner filed a Schedule 13D amendment on August 28, disclosing his stake had fallen to 13.8% from 15.6% previously — the third amendment since the original March 2025 13D filing. Wagner remains on the activist register, meaning the 13D designation of intent persists, but the direction of travel is reduction rather than accumulation. His last open-market purchases were in April at $4.00 — well above the current $2.22 price. That gap, combined with no insider buying in the 90 days ended August 16, is worth tracking. On the institutional side, Dblp Sea Cow Limited added 2.5 million shares to reach 12.1% as of August 24, while Alejandro Gonzalez lifted his holding to 7.2%, adding 7.3 million shares since July. The two directions — insiders trimming, certain outside holders adding — reflect genuinely divided conviction at the register level.
The September 1 earnings print knocked the stock 19.4% in a single session, and the five-day move was nearly as bad at -20.1%. The next event is flagged for October 6. With short interest near cycle highs, availability tight, and the short score at its highest reading yet, the setup into that print is the number to watch — specifically whether short interest continues to build in the three weeks ahead of the release or begins to pare back as the date approaches.
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