Galaxy Digital has reversed sharply from last week's highs, dropping 15% to $23.07, and the short sellers who held firm through the previous surge are now building further into the weakness.
Short interest has climbed to 16.2% of the free float, roughly 31.1 million shares, up from 15.8% a week ago. That is a meaningful step-up: where shorts refused to cover into the 22% rally, they have now added through the 15% decline. The official FINRA fortnightly reading puts days-to-cover at 6.6, up from 4.8 in the previous note, which means the mechanical overhang has grown. Despite the rising position, the borrow market is not tightening to match: cost to borrow has actually eased on the week, falling 17% to 0.51%, and availability is running at 167%, meaning there are still roughly five shares available to lend for every three already out on loan. The 52-week tightest point was 44%, so the lending pool has ample room before any squeeze mechanics come into play. The ORTEX short score has nudged up to 68.4 from 65.7 a week ago, placing the stock in the bottom 7th percentile of the universe on short score rank. Options positioning has edged more defensive: the put/call ratio is 0.60, roughly 1.3 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.54, though it remains well below the 52-week high of 1.05 seen earlier in the year.
The Street remains broadly constructive but the gap between consensus and current price has widened considerably. The most recent analyst action on record is Morgan Stanley raising its target to $48 from $37 while maintaining Overweight, filed at the start of September. The mean price target across covering analysts is $40.44, implying around 75% upside from the current price. Bulls point to Galaxy's integrated digital assets platform, the Helios data centre delivering lease revenues in Q2, an approved 830MW power portfolio, and a balance sheet carrying roughly $2.6 billion in cash and stablecoins. Bears argue the business remains deeply cyclical, with earnings visibility hostage to token prices and trading volumes. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed by roughly 10 turns over the past 30 days to 32.8x, reflecting both the price decline and forward estimates that remain heavily dependent on crypto market conditions. The earnings momentum factor score sits at a perfect 100 on a 90-day basis, but the 30-day reading has collapsed to 6, a sign that the near-term revision picture has deteriorated sharply relative to the longer trend.
Two directors made open-market purchases in mid-August, Douglas Deason buying 12,000 shares at $21.54 and Steven Bandrowczak picking up 5,100 shares at $19.63, both discretionary transactions with no 10b5-1 plan attached. Those purchases were made at prices below current levels. On the other side, the Chief Legal Officer filed planned sales under a 10b5-1 arrangement in early September, routine compensation mechanics rather than a conviction signal. The net insider position over 90 days is modestly negative at roughly 16,000 shares sold. CEO Michael Novogratz holds 49.9% of shares outstanding, down from 53.5% as last disclosed in February; the Vanguard Group exited its 13G position entirely by March while a separate Vanguard Capital Management entity filed a new 5.1% stake in April, reflecting a restructuring of Vanguard's holdings rather than an outright exit. Capital Research and FMR remain the two largest third-party institutional holders at 9.4% and 8.5% respectively, both adding modestly in recent quarters.
Wikipedia attention for Galaxy Digital registered a z-score of 2.6 against its own trailing 90-day history as of September 22, the highest retail attention signal in the dataset. That reading arrived just before the stock began reversing, and attention spikes of this kind are colour on sentiment rather than a directional indicator for the business.
The peer group has had a rough week. GEMI fell 11%, BTGO dropped 12%, and BKKT gave back nearly 17%. COIN and HOOD each fell around 5% to 6%. Galaxy's 15% decline sits roughly in the middle of that range, so this week's move looks more like a sector-wide pullback than idiosyncratic pressure. The next earnings event is on November 5, and given that the prior two prints produced next-day moves of around 12% and 20% to the downside, how shorts position in the weeks ahead of that date will be the key variable to watch.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open GLXY 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.
