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JPMorgan Chase arrives at its October 13 Q3 earnings print with short sellers continuing to exit and the brief borrow-cost spike flagged last week fully reversing, leaving the stock's clearest tension in what analysts and valuation multiples are signalling at a price down 8% over the past month.
The borrow story has moved on from where it stood six days ago. Cost to borrow peaked at 0.49% on October 2 and has since collapsed to 0.24%, a drop of roughly half in less than a week. That reverses the anomaly noted in the previous note: the spike was not driven by supply scarcity, and with availability still at its absolute ceiling (well over a billion shares available to lend with virtually no strain on the pool), there was nothing structural behind it. Short interest itself has edged down another 0.4% over the week to 0.85% of free float, a level so low it is not a meaningful directional signal. The ORTEX short score is flat at 30.5, and has barely moved in two weeks. There is no short-side conviction building here. Options are equally calm: the put/call ratio at 1.05 is slightly below its 20-day average of 1.10, meaning options traders have actually pulled back from defensive positioning rather than adding to it ahead of earnings.
The more interesting tension is between the stock's recent price action and where the Street thinks it should trade. JPM has fallen 8% over the past month to $329.58, and the consensus remains a hold with 12 analysts at that rating. But within the recent changes, the picture is more bullish than the headline suggests. UBS trimmed its target modestly to $395 from $400 this week while keeping its Buy rating, and TD Cowen reinstated with a Hold at $370 on Thursday. Wells Fargo's Mike Mayo, who raised his target to $390 in August, and BofA Securities, which went to $420 in July, both sit well above the current price. The factor scores add texture: the dividend rank is in the 95th percentile, EPS surprise is in the 92nd, and the analyst recommendation differential scores in the 92nd, meaning the distribution of ratings is more bullish than the consensus label implies. The price-to-earnings multiple has contracted to 13.3x over the past month, down more than a full turn in 30 days, and the price-to-book ratio has pulled back to 2.25x, its lowest in recent weeks.
The company's own FDIC call report data, published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, offers some context on the underlying business, though neither series has enough history for ORTEX to have tested whether it leads the reported figures. Net loans and leases have risen for nine consecutive quarters, reaching $1.54 trillion as of the April period. Total deposits have grown for three consecutive quarters, reaching $2.82 trillion. These are streak facts, not forecasts of the October 13 print.
On the peer side, the selling has been broad across US banks. BAC fell 1.7% on the week, USB dropped 2.8%, and KEY and CFG each lost around 1% to 1.6%. JPM's own 0.4% weekly decline is relatively contained against that backdrop. Morgan Stanley trimmed its JPM holding by 1.6 million shares as of June 30, the most recent data available, though that disclosure is now three months old.
With five days to the earnings release, what matters next is whether Q3 net interest income holds up against the pressure the bear case identifies, and whether one-time gains have again been doing the heavy lifting in net income growth.
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