IGPT, Invesco's AI and Next Gen Software ETF, closed the week with its options market locked in an unusually one-sided bullish stance — even as the borrow market, which dominated the prior two notes, has continued to normalise.
The options story remains the most striking data point. Call positioning still overwhelms puts by a historic margin. The put/call ratio edged up to 0.0439 on Tuesday from Monday's 0.0324, but both readings sit at the extreme low end of the past year — the 52-week low is 0.0194, the high 0.6042. Against a 20-day mean of 0.078, Tuesday's reading is roughly 2.4 standard deviations below average. That is a meaningful unwind from the near-four-standard-deviation extreme flagged in Monday's note, but options flow remains far more call-heavy than at any point this time last year. The ETF's 12% gain over the past week and 13% rise over the past month have clearly drawn momentum buyers, and options positioning reflects that demand.
The borrow market tells a calmer story now, and that is itself significant given how volatile it has been. Availability has surged to 164.9% — meaning there are more than one-and-a-half shares available to borrow for every share already lent out — up sharply from 94.8% on Monday and from as low as 19.3% on September 18. That September 18 trough, flagged in the September 16 note as the tightest reading in twelve months, has now fully reversed. Cost to borrow has also eased slightly to 2.97%, down from a mid-week peak near 3.43% on September 18, though it remains about 66% above its level a month ago. The borrow market is looser, not loose — and the cost-to-borrow elevation suggests lenders haven't fully returned to pre-squeeze rates. Short interest is trivially small at under 0.8% of the float and carries no directional signal worth dwelling on.
Institutional flows into the ETF add some texture to the bullish picture. Morgan Stanley added 119,143 shares in the quarter to June 30, bringing its stake to just over 5% of the fund. HighTower Advisors made the largest relative move, adding 239,576 shares to reach 4.7%. Susquehanna, a firm whose ETF positioning often reflects options-related hedging activity, built a fresh 147,342-share position from zero. None of these are activist stakes — this is an ETF — but the breadth of additions among wealth managers and broker-dealers is consistent with the call-heavy options flow: the money coming in looks like risk-on allocation rather than defensive repositioning.
The short score has drifted lower all week, slipping from 47 on September 18 to 43.4 on Tuesday, its lowest reading in the 10-day window. A falling short score in the context of rising price and loosening borrow reflects a market where the conditions for a short-driven event are receding. What to watch next is whether the put/call ratio continues to normalise back toward its 0.078 mean — a sustained return toward average hedging levels, combined with the borrow market stabilising in the 100%-200% availability range, would confirm that the week's extreme sentiment is fading rather than building into a new structural positioning shift.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open IGPT on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
