Stories are generated from ORTEX data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. How we publish
MARA Holdings heads into its November 6 earnings report with short sellers adding to already heavy positions, the stock down 14% on the week, and options traders leaning bullish at odds with the broader bearish positioning.
Short interest tells the central story here. At 27.6% of free float, the bear case is not subtle: roughly one in four shares is borrowed and sold short. That figure has climbed steadily over the past three weeks, rising 3.2% over the past week alone to 104.4 million shares. The move reverses a partial unwind that ran through most of September, when shorts trimmed from above 109 million shares to around 100 million before rebuilding. The borrow market remains relaxed despite this. Cost to borrow runs at just 0.56%, down about 9% on the week, and availability has loosened meaningfully: shares available to borrow now represent roughly 58% of short interest, up from a tighter sub-45% reading seen in early September. That combination, heavy short positioning but no stress in the lending pool, suggests the current short interest level is sustainable without an imminent squeeze.
Options traders are reading the tape differently. The put/call ratio dropped to 0.68 on Friday, nearly 1.7 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.71, putting it close to its 52-week low of 0.65. That is the most call-heavy options skew of the past year, meaning the derivatives market is positioned for upside even as short sellers press the other direction. The two camps are openly disagreeing. Bitcoin miners broadly sold off this week: CLSK fell 17.6%, RIOT dropped 14.4%, and KEEL was down 15.7%. MARA's own 14% decline kept it roughly in line with the peer group, though HUT and CORZ held up better, each falling less than 7%.
The Street is split in a way that mirrors the options and short interest divergence. Seven analysts carry buy or outperform ratings, with a consensus mean price target around $18.69, almost double the current price of $9.65. But the most recent high-profile move went the other way: JP Morgan downgraded MARA to Underweight in mid-September, cutting its target to $11 from $13. Morgan Stanley, also Underweight, lifted its target to $11 from $6 at roughly the same time, a raise that still sits below where the stock traded when the note was filed. HC Wainwright initiated with a Buy and a $20 target in the same week. The result is a consensus that looks bullish on paper but has two major-firm Underweights anchoring the lower end. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 67x looks elevated for a business generating deeply negative earnings, and the ORTEX short score of 66.8 ranks in the bottom 7th percentile of the universe, flagging the elevated short interest as a defining characteristic of the stock.
The bull case rests on a business transformation that has not yet shown up in the numbers. MARA's 200 MW Hannibal campus and a potential AI/HPC lease to investment-grade tenants by year-end 2026 are the key pivot points, alongside the Starwood partnership and a proposed 505 MW generation asset via the Long Ridge acquisition. The bear case is equally concrete: bitcoin mining generated 96.8% of trailing revenue but produced only 17% gross profit before depreciation in the second quarter, while the net loss reached $611.3 million on revenue that fell 27% year on year. The AI infrastructure story is real optionality, but the execution remains unproven, and the company's $393.9 million of G&A this year leaves little room for error. Retail attention, as tracked by MARA's Wikipedia page views, is running about 1.6 standard deviations below its own 90-day average, suggesting the broader crowd has not yet re-engaged with the name.
Earnings in prior quarters have been punishing: MARA fell around 10% on the day of its August 2026 print and shed another 8 percentage points over the following week. With the next report on November 6, twenty-seven days away, the question framing the next month is whether the AI leasing narrative produces any concrete announcements, or whether results again reflect a mining business under pressure from lower bitcoin economics and heavy fixed costs.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open MARA 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.
