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Short sellers have rushed into UNG over the past week. The United States Natural Gas Fund has seen short interest nearly double in a month, and the lending pool is now close to empty.
Short interest in UNG hit 13.8% of free float as of 2 October, up 58% in a single week and 73% over the past month. That is a fast, sustained build in a fund that tracks front-month natural gas futures. Borrowing shares is getting harder and more expensive by the day.
Availability has dropped to 18.3% of shares already borrowed. Only about one share remains available for every five already out on loan. A week ago that figure stood at 73%. The 52-week low for availability is 2.4%, so there is still room to tighten further, but the pace of the move is sharp.
Cost to borrow has risen alongside. It now stands at 1.59%, up 78% over the past week and 82% over the past month. That is still modest in absolute terms, well below levels that would typically cause shorts to close positions on cost alone. But the direction matters. Both the borrow cost and the short interest have been climbing together, which indicates new shorts are entering even as the pool shrinks.
The ORTEX short score for UNG reached 65.4 on 2 October. Ten days earlier it was 54.8. The score has climbed every session in that window without exception. A score above 60 reflects meaningful pressure across the lending and positioning signals combined.
One signal points the other way. The put-call ratio sits at 0.31, close to its 20-day average of 0.32 and near the lower end of its 52-week range of 0.24 to 0.98. Options traders are not leaning bearish. That divergence between the lending market and the options market is worth tracking: if the PCR starts rising to meet the short interest story, the bearish consensus would look considerably more aligned.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open UNG on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
