BOKF Short Interest Keeps Climbing Into the Print

BOK Financial Corporation heads into its Q3 results today with short sellers still adding exposure, even as most regional bank peers have recovered.

Short interest has continued building since yesterday's preview. It now stands at 4.16% of free float, up 12% on the week and 22% over the past month. Cost to borrow has moved higher too, reaching 0.48%, a 32% rise over the past week, though it remains low in absolute terms. The borrow market itself stays loose: availability is running at 727%, meaning there are roughly 7 shares available to lend for every one already borrowed, well above the 52-week trough of 204%. That gap between rising short interest and ample availability confirms the same picture as yesterday: this is a directional view being expressed by short sellers, not a structural squeeze risk. Options positioning has tilted further toward calls, with the put/call ratio dropping to 0.38, roughly 1.5 standard deviations below its 20-day average. That divergence between options bulls and short-side bears sets up an unusually clear two-sided debate heading into the release.

The gap between those two camps tracks closely with what analysts disagree about. Bulls point to genuine loan momentum: period-end loans grew 3.4% quarter-on-quarter in Q2, management raised full-year loan growth guidance above 10%, and average net charge-offs have held at just 11 basis points since 2013. The CET1 ratio at 12.89% and a loan-to-deposit ratio of 68% give the balance sheet room to absorb stress. Bears focus on fee income fragility. Brokerage and trading revenues fell $9.7 million quarter-on-quarter to $25 million in Q2, and total customer-related fees dropped $7.8 million. Net interest margin held at 2.92%, but competitive loan and deposit pricing limits how far that can expand. Wells Fargo downgraded the stock to Underweight at end of September, cutting its target from $148 to $135. RBC trimmed its target to $146 two weeks ago while staying at Sector Perform. The consensus mean sits at $147, representing about 19% above the current price of $122.86, but the direction of recent analyst moves is cautious.

The ownership structure adds important context. George Kaiser controls roughly 62.5% of shares, leaving a genuinely thin float. That concentrated ownership explains why availability can be loose even as short interest climbs: the tradeable float is small, and the borrow pool relative to that float remains deep. The FDIC call report data from ORTEX Alt Data does show that net loans and leases have risen for five consecutive quarters, and Q2 marked the largest total asset base on record since 2024 at $52.98 billion. The FDIC lead for this dataset is untested against BOKF's reported figures, so those trends are colour rather than a signal on the print.

The Q3 report will test whether the bank's loan growth trajectory can offset the drag from volatile trading revenues, and whether the widening gap between short sellers' conviction and options bulls' optimism has any basis in the numbers.