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MARA Holdings carries 27.6% short interest into its November 6 earnings date, with the stock down 14% on the week and the sector selling off broadly, yet options traders are positioned more bullishly than the headline numbers suggest.
Short sellers have been steadily adding since late September. At 104.4 million shares short, positioning has climbed 3.2% over the past week and reversed a partial unwind that ran through mid-September, when the position shrank from above 109 million shares to around 100 million before rebuilding. The borrow market, however, shows no sign of stress. Cost to borrow runs at just 0.56%, down roughly 9% on the week and 12% over the past month. Availability has also loosened sharply: shares available to borrow now represent about 58% of short interest, up from readings below 40% in early September when the lending pool was meaningfully tighter. Heavy short interest combined with loosening borrow conditions points to a position that is growing without strain rather than one approaching a squeeze.
Options positioning cuts against the bearish grain. The put/call ratio fell to 0.68 on Friday, nearly 1.7 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.71, and near the 52-week low of 0.65. That is a call-heavy setup: options traders are leaning toward upside exposure even as short sellers rebuild. The divergence between a 27.6% short interest figure and a below-average put/call ratio is the central tension in MARA's positioning right now.
The Street remains nominally bullish but with real reservations. Seven analysts carry buy-equivalent ratings and the consensus mean target is $18.69, roughly double the current $9.65 print. The bull case centres on the 200 MW Hannibal campus, potential AI and HPC leases by year-end, and a 4.8 GW power platform that offers optionality beyond bitcoin mining. The bear case is harder to dismiss: mining produced 97% of trailing revenue, gross profit before depreciation was only 17% in the second quarter as revenue fell 27% year-on-year to $174.9 million, and the net loss reached $611.3 million. Morgan Stanley, maintaining an Underweight, raised its target to $11 in mid-September, still well below current analyst consensus. JP Morgan moved in the same direction, downgrading to Underweight from Overweight with an $11 target on September 14. Factor scores reinforce the caution: the short score ranks in the 7th percentile of the universe, EPS momentum over both 30 and 90 days sits in the bottom decile, and the analyst recommendation differential scores at just 5. EPS surprise at the 94th percentile is the one standout positive in the factor profile.
Insider activity is worth noting for what it tells about conviction at the top. Net insider selling over the past 90 days totals roughly 183,000 shares and nearly $2 million in value. CEO Frederick Thiel and CFO Salman Khan Hassan have both been selling under pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans, which limits the signal, but no offsetting purchases appear in the filings. The top institutional holders include BlackRock, which added 4.3 million shares to a 16.6% stake as of September 30, and Dimensional Fund Advisors, which added 4.4 million shares. Those flows provide some institutional underpinning even as the CEO executes plan-based sales.
Peer performance adds context to the selloff. CLSK fell 17.6% on the week, RIOT dropped 14.4%, and HUT was the relative outperformer at down 6%. The sector move is broad, suggesting macro pressure on crypto-adjacent names rather than MARA-specific deterioration. The last two MARA earnings prints each produced one-day declines of around 10%, with five-day losses reaching 14% to 18%. With the November 6 date 27 days out, how the stock trades into that window, and whether short sellers continue to add or begin to trim, is the next thing to watch.
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