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TD enters October in a curious position: short sellers are rebuilding their book at the fastest pace in months, yet the lending market remains so loose it barely registers as a constraint.
The short position has grown 13% over the past month to 1.8% of free float, a level flagged as low but now trending steadily upward after holding flat through most of September. The one-week increase of 1.7% follows a similar move in the prior period. That said, borrow conditions put no meaningful pressure on new short sellers. Availability has tightened sharply from above 9,000% of short interest in early September to 1,437% today, but the direction is more interesting than the level. The cost to borrow, which spiked to 1.97% at end-of-quarter, has eased back to 0.93% and is no longer the distraction it was in the September 30 note. What remains is a gradual, consistent build in the short book, not a squeeze or a panic, just incremental bearish positioning against a stock that is down 0.5% on the week to CAD 168.06.
The broader Canadian banking sector has had a rough week. RY fell 1.4%, BMO dropped 1.9%, and BNS slid 2.3%. TD's relative performance is marginally better this week, but the sector is pulling everything lower together. US peers KEY and FITB held flat to modestly positive, suggesting the weakness is concentrated in Canadian banks rather than bank stocks broadly. That Canadian-specific pressure may partly explain why the short book is rebuilding: this is sector-level repositioning, not a TD-specific conviction call. The analyst consensus remains constructive, with a mean price target of CAD 178.36 against the current price, implying roughly 6% upside. No recent rating changes are on record since late September.
Factor scores paint a stock that earns good marks on fundamentals but scores average on sentiment and positioning. Earnings momentum over both 30 and 90 days ranks in the 80th to 85th percentile. The dividend score comes in at 89, reflecting TD's consistent payout history. Short score rank sits at 45 and days-to-cover rank at 34, both squarely in the middle of the distribution. The PE at 15.4x and price-to-book at 2.3x have been broadly stable over the past month. Nothing in the valuation picture suggests a meaningful re-rating in either direction.
The most differentiated data point this week comes from ORTEX Alt Data via two regulatory sources. On the Canadian side, OSFI monthly filings show TD's uninsured residential mortgages have fallen for 10 consecutive months, to CAD 247.9 billion as of July 2026. At the same time, business loans have risen for seven consecutive months, reaching CAD 252.2 billion. These two trends are moving in opposite directions at almost identical absolute levels, suggesting a genuine rotation within the loan book from consumer mortgage exposure toward commercial lending. On the US side, FDIC call reports show TD's insured US bank charter total assets have fallen for seven consecutive quarters, to USD 374.9 billion as of April 2026, and net loans and leases have declined in parallel. The FDIC dataset has not yet accumulated enough history to be tested as a lead indicator for TD's reported figures. It stands as context, not a signal.
The December 3 earnings date is 57 days away. Between now and then, the question worth tracking is whether the short book continues its measured rebuild and, if so, whether availability begins to tighten from its still-abundant level into a genuine constraint on that positioning.
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