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The contradictory tension that defined PNQI through September, a shrinking short position paired with rising borrow costs, has begun to resolve, with cost to borrow now falling sharply and availability flooding back into the lending pool.
The borrow market has normalised faster than most would have anticipated. Cost to borrow has dropped to 1.66%, down 21% on the week, reversing the climb that had pushed it to 2.9% as recently as September 29. Availability has swung from extremely tight to extremely loose. At its most constrained, on September 18, availability fell to just 29%, meaning barely one share sat idle for every three already lent. Today it stands at over 6,000%, a level that signals the lending pool is essentially uncrowded. That snapback in availability is the most telling data point of the week: whatever demand for borrows was driving tightness through mid-September has now fully evaporated.
Short interest itself tells a consistent story, and one that has not changed materially since the previous note. Shares short have edged fractionally higher on the day to around 136,000, but remain down 2% on the week and down roughly 50% over the past month. At under 1% of float, the short position on PNQI is effectively at noise level. The ORTEX short score has drifted a touch lower to 33.5, its least bearish reading of the recent period, and down from 46 in late September. The score confirms what the raw SI data shows: there is very little directional conviction on the short side right now.
Options positioning adds a further layer of calm. The put/call ratio has printed at zero for the past two weeks, with no put activity at all against a thin book of calls. The 20-day average PCR is just 0.05, and even that is mostly residual from earlier in September when there was limited put interest. For an ETF tracking internet and digital names, the complete absence of put hedging is notable, though with such thin options volume the signal carries limited weight.
The price has edged up 2% on the week to $51.58, recovering part of last month's 1% pullback. With no earnings calendar for the ETF itself, the next inflection will come from the underlying holdings, particularly any quarterly prints from large-cap internet names that make up the bulk of PNQI's exposure. The gap between a normalised borrow market and the earlier tightness episode is what to watch: whether borrow demand rebuilds around those upcoming reports, or whether the lending pool stays this loose, will indicate whether September's short-side flurry was a one-off or the beginning of a new positioning cycle.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open PNQI 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.
