Palantir Pulls Back From $190 as Peers Slide

The positioning picture continues to look clean rather than charged. Short interest fell another 9.1% on the week to 2.56% of the free float, the lowest level in this data series, and has now declined 19% over the past month. Borrow costs remain negligible at 0.28%, and availability is essentially uncapped: over 2.2 billion shares are lendable against roughly 58 million short. There is no squeeze setup, no tightening in the lending market, and no sign that bears are rebuilding. The ORTEX short score has drifted down to 30.99, its lowest reading in the past two weeks, reinforcing the picture of a stock where short-side conviction has largely evaporated. Options tell a similar story. The put/call ratio of 1.05 is sitting almost exactly on its 20-day average of 1.05, with a z-score of minus 0.14, meaning there is no unusual defensive hedging visible ahead of the November 2 earnings date.

The Street remains constructive but the analyst data carries a caveat. The consensus rating is Hold with a mean price target of $185.24, though that figure reflects a stale dataset (consensus as of March 2026). More useful are the recent individual actions. UBS raised its target to $250 from $220 on September 15, keeping a Buy. DA Davidson lifted to $250 from $200 on September 11, also maintaining Buy. Rosenblatt reiterated Buy and a $225 target on September 23. The direction of travel among active bulls is clearly upward, with multiple targets now sitting 20% to 35% above the current price. The lone cautious note in the recent set is Cantor Fitzgerald's Neutral, with a $156 target that implies modest downside. The bull case centres on mission-critical AI adoption, net revenue retention running near 186%, and the TITAN production ramp. Bears point to premium valuation: the trailing PE is 87x, price-to-book is 26x, and the forward EV/EBIT multiple sits at 11th percentile on value factor scores, meaning the stock is priced for near-perfection on growth delivery.

Insider activity is all planned sales. Director Alexander Moore sold just over 16,000 shares across multiple tranches on September 15, all executed under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan and totalling roughly $2.75 million. CEO Alexander Karp's activity in the same window was a conversion transaction rather than an open-market sale. Net insider share flow over 90 days is minus 768,000 shares at a net value of approximately minus $125 million, but the 10b5-1 nature of the sales means they reflect pre-scheduled liquidations rather than a discretionary read on valuation. Wikipedia attention for Palantir is running below its own 90-day baseline, with a z-score of minus 1.86 as of early September, suggesting retail interest has cooled relative to the August earnings frenzy.

The setup heading into November is therefore a stock that has digested a 32% post-earnings gap and a 50%-plus rally without attracting meaningful new short interest or defensive options positioning, while a cluster of bullish analysts have raised targets well above the current price and peers are selling off around it. What to watch is whether the $187 level holds as sector pressure continues, and whether any fresh analyst action from the firms yet to update post-August earnings changes the consensus picture ahead of the November 2 print.