Wolfspeed Short Sellers Have Near-Total Grip on the Float

Wolfspeed enters earnings week with one of the most extreme short positioning profiles in the semiconductor sector: short interest has climbed to 104% of the free float, meaning borrowed shares outstanding exceed the entire tradeable float.

The borrow market tells the same story. Availability has been at zero for weeks, with no shares remaining in the lending pool relative to what is already borrowed. That reading has been the floor for most of the past six weeks, with only brief partial loosening on October 15 and October 7. The cost to borrow, at 1.87%, is modest in absolute terms and has eased roughly a third over the past month, which is an unusual combination: maximum tightness in availability but a relatively low borrow rate, suggesting the short position was built when borrowing was cheaper and has since been locked in. Options traders have moved hard in the other direction. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.29, nearly three standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.42, touching the lowest level of the past year. That is an unusually call-heavy posture for a stock with over 100% of float sold short, and it sits against months of more balanced options flow through September.

The stock fell 17.7% on the week to close at $23.50, a sharper drop than almost all of its closest peers. MTSI fell 14.8% over the same period and NVTS dropped 16.4%, so sector pressure was real. But Wolfspeed's move was steeper, and with short interest already above 100% of float, every incremental seller is either a new short adding at the margin or an existing holder exiting. The stock is down about 8% over the past month, and the price is now close to the consensus analyst target of $25.00.

Analyst conviction is thin and trending lower. Susquehanna's Christopher Rolland cut his target from $30 to $25 this morning, maintaining a Neutral rating, continuing a pattern of gradual step-downs: he was at $40 in July, $30 in October 2025, and $1.50 before that. TD Cowen reinstated coverage in August with a Hold and a $25 target. No firm has a Buy-equivalent rating among the recent changes on record. The ORTEX factor score for analyst recommendation sits at just 46 out of 100, below the sector median. The short score factor rank is 2, the lowest possible cohort, which reflects the extreme borrow pressure. The combined ORTEX stock score of 77 is driven by near-term price momentum and a low price-to-book, not by fundamental quality metrics.

Wolfspeed reports earnings on October 27. Its two most recent quarterly releases both produced sharp negative reactions: a one-day drop of 11.4% after the August 20 print, and a one-day drop of 16.2% after the August 19 release, with five-day moves of minus 7.4% and minus 14.4% respectively. Wikipedia page views for the company spiked to a z-score of 3.7 against its own 90-day history as of October 9, pointing to a surge in retail attention ahead of the print. The divergence between the extreme short position and the unusually call-heavy options market is the tension to watch as the company prepares to report.