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DXC shorts surge as call buyers bet on earnings recovery

Edited by Peter Hillerberg2 min readdata as of 19 Oct 2026, 17:16

Stories are generated from ORTEX data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. How we publish

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Options traders are piling into calls on DXC ahead of a 29 October earnings print. Short sellers are building positions at the same time. Both camps are making aggressive moves, and the data is moving fast.

Options: call buyers take control

The put-call ratio hit 0.36 on 16 October, the lowest reading in 52 weeks. That compares to a 52-week high of 1.14. At 2.4 standard deviations below its 20-day mean, the shift to calls is statistically extreme. Earnings are ten days away. The last two prints saw DXC fall more than 4.5% on the day, so the call skew reflects a clear contrarian bet on a different outcome this time.

Short sellers are equally aggressive

SI % FF stands at 15.6%, up 16.3% in a single week. That is the highest level since early September. At that level, shorts represent roughly 8.5 days to cover based on the most recent FINRA data.

The borrow market is tightening in parallel. Cost to borrow rose 226% over the past week to 1.63%, having sat near 0.50% for the previous six weeks. Availability has dropped to 296%, down 7.6% on the week. Still plenty of supply, but the direction is clear: borrowing demand is rising faster than supply.

The ORTEX short score is 68.4, close to a two-week high.

Institutions are split

BlackRock added nearly 5 million shares in the most recent filing period, bringing its stake to 17.7% of shares. American Century added 1.4 million shares in the same period. State Street added 1.5 million. On the other side, Glenview Capital, which held 5.2% as recently as May 2025, has filed a 13G showing a zero position as last disclosed. Millennium trimmed from 5.7% to 4.1%. All 13D/G positions are as last disclosed and may not reflect current holdings.

Wikipedia attention spike

Retail attention, measured by an average of daily English Wikipedia views and ORTEX page views on a log scale, was running at a z-score of 2.49 as of 25 September. That is well above DXC's own 90-day history. The dataset carries no measured lead to revenue, so this is colour only.

Data summary

  • SI % FF: 15.6%, up 16.3% in one week, highest since early September
  • Cost to borrow: 1.63%, up 226% on the week
  • Availability: 296%, down 7.6% on the week
  • Put-call ratio: 0.36, 52-week low, z-score of -2.4
  • Earnings: 29 October
  • ORTEX short score: 68.4
  • BlackRock stake: 17.7%, after adding ~5 million shares last quarter
  • Analyst mean price target: $11.21, versus the 16 October close of $13.62

Stocks in this article

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How this article was generated

Generated
19 Oct 2026, 17:17
Data as of
19 Oct 2026, 17:16
Prompt version
v1.0
Data sources
Short interestCost to borrowUtilizationOptions flowEarningsInstitutional positioningORTEX Alpha signalsRecent ORTEX notesAlt Data

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.