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IREN heads into the week of October 7 with the brief relief in its lending market already reversing, short interest climbing back toward its recent highs, and November earnings 30 days away.
The most important development since Tuesday's note is that availability has snapped back down to 5.3%, having touched 23.9% on October 5. That is a sharp reversal in a single session. For most of September the pool was near-exhausted, with availability below 1% at its tightest. A week ago it looked like that pressure had genuinely eased. Now the lending pool is tight again, with roughly one share available for every nineteen already borrowed, and the pool is fully drawn at 100% of shares out on loan. Borrow cost edged higher to 0.99%, up 13% on the week, though that remains low in absolute terms. The two moves together tell a consistent story: the brief loosening earlier this week was temporary, and demand to hold short positions has reasserted itself quickly.
Short interest itself confirms bears are rebuilding rather than retreating. The position rose 2.1% over the past week to 80.0 million shares, representing 28.2% of the free float. That reverses the stabilisation noted in recent days and marks a partial bounce back toward the September peak of over 104 million shares. The ORTEX short score of 68.4 is essentially unchanged over the past ten days, ranking in the 6th percentile of the universe, a persistently elevated reading. Options are not adding directional noise: the put/call ratio of 0.69 is fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.70, with a z-score near zero. Options traders are neither hedging aggressively nor pressing calls. The positioning story is driven entirely by the lending market, not derivatives.
The Street remains split, and the gap between the most bullish and most cautious voices is unusually wide. JP Morgan's upgrade to Overweight on September 14, with a target of $65, represents the bellwether move of the past month. Two new initiations followed: Northland Capital at $99 Outperform and Rothschild at $40 Neutral, which between them bracket nearly the entire current price of $41.28. B. Riley trimmed its target from $96 to $91 on September 29 while holding Buy. The consensus mean target of $78.14 implies roughly 89% upside from current levels, though the $40 Neutral from Rothschild, set just two weeks ago, suggests at least one credible voice thinks the stock is fully valued here. The bull case rests on sold-out 2026 capacity, roughly $4 billion of contracted ARR, and GPU contract pricing up 125% since November. Bears point to execution risk on rapid GPU deployment, customer concentration, and the sensitivity of EBITDA projections to spot pricing. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 3.6x has compressed 0.26 turns over 30 days, consistent with a market that has re-rated the near-term earnings profile slightly lower. Factor scores are bifurcated: EPS momentum ranks at the 99th and 100th percentile over 30 and 90 days respectively, and the analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 99th percentile, but the short score rank sits at the 6th percentile, a persistent drag.
Institutional positioning adds a layer of interest. Citadel's latest filing, reported September 23, shows a position of 18.7 million shares built almost entirely in the latest period, with a prior change of 18.2 million shares. Goldman Sachs filed a 13G in August disclosing 9.4% of the class across 33.6 million shares, though as a 13G this is a passive holding and the stake is as last disclosed. Both holders can reduce below 5% without filing again. BlackRock and State Street both reported fresh positions at September 30, adding 8.9 million and 3.8 million shares respectively, signalling continued index and passive accumulation. On the other side, Jane Street has reduced from 6.4% to 4.7% across successive filings, and Capital Ventures cut from 7.0% to 4.2%. The insider register is quiet for practical purposes: all recent form 4 activity reflects July 1 award grants, transaction code A, with no market prices attached. The last open-market transaction in the data is a director sale of $434,000 from September 2025.
The stock is down 7.6% over the past month but effectively flat on the week at $41.28, holding ground while peers CLSK and RIOT dropped 7.7% and 11.5% over the same five days. Wikipedia attention for IREN is running at a z-score of 1.7 against its own 90-day history, an elevated retail attention reading, though this dataset has not been measured to lead the company's reported figures.
The November 6 earnings print is now the main focus. What to watch between now and then is whether the renewed tightening in availability holds, whether short interest continues to rebuild toward its September highs of 104 million shares, and whether the Street's wide target dispersion narrows as the company provides any update on Sweetwater deployment or GPU pricing in the run-up to the print.
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