Why this matters: JPMorgan Chase has spent two weeks shedding short positions. Now, 11 days before Q3 earnings, the cost to borrow its shares has spiked 144% in a week. Short interest is at a six-month low. The borrow market is enormous. Those two facts pulling in opposite directions are worth unpacking.
Cost to borrow hit 0.48% on October 1, up from 0.20% seven days earlier. That is a 144% jump in a single week. It is also the sharpest weekly move in borrow cost over the past 30 days, during which CTB is up 45%.
The odd part: borrow availability remains at its absolute maximum recorded level. There are roughly 2.2 billion shares available to lend. Nothing about the lending pool suggests a supply squeeze. The CTB move is not being driven by scarcity.
One plausible read is timing. With earnings 11 days out, some short sellers may be rolling or re-establishing positions into the print, pushing the marginal borrow cost higher even as aggregate short interest continues to fall. The ORTEX short score sits at 30.4, down from 31.2 a week ago, consistent with easing rather than building bearish conviction.
Short interest fell to 0.85% of free float as of October 1, down 11.8% over the past week. That is the lowest level since approximately April. At this level, SI is not a primary story on its own. But the direction and pace of the decline are notable. Shorts have shed roughly 3.3 million shares over the past month alone.
The previous ORTEX articles on JPM flagged the put/call unwinding as the lead story. That dynamic has continued. The PCR now stands at 1.03, a z-score of -1.42 against the 20-day mean of 1.13. Hedges that were in place in mid-September have not been replaced. Options traders are not rebuilding downside protection even as the stock has pulled back 6% from its August peak and is now at $333.
HSBC raised its price target to $377 from $369 on September 28, maintaining a Hold. The consensus mean target sits at $376, implying roughly 13% upside from current levels. Wells Fargo (Overweight, $390) and UBS (Buy, $400) remain among the more constructive voices.
FDIC call report data tracked by ORTEX Alt Data shows JPMorgan's net loans and leases have risen for nine consecutive quarters, reaching $1.54 trillion as of the April 2026 period. Total deposits rose for a third straight quarter to $2.82 trillion. Both datasets are untested against the company's reported earnings, so neither points to the October 13 print in any measured sense. They are balance sheet texture, not a forecast.
What to watch: whether the CTB spike is a one-day artifact or the start of fresh short-side positioning into the print. If availability stays ample and CTB keeps rising, it would suggest demand for borrows is building even as headline SI falls.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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