PEBO shorts hit a year high as options flip to extreme bullish
Produced automatically from ORTEX data and published under the ORTEX News editorial standards set by Peter Hillerberg, Editor, ORTEX News. How we publish
Short sellers have built their largest position in Peoples Bancorp in at least a year. Short interest stands at 6.14% of free float, up 9.6% over the past week and 23.9% over the past month.
Bears pile in, buyers dominate options
The weekly build has been consistent. Short shares rose from roughly 1.86 million in early October to 2.15 million as of October 21. The month-long accumulation has been steady rather than a single spike.
Against that, options positioning tells a sharply different story. The put-call ratio hit 0.12 on October 21, its lowest reading in 52 weeks. The 20-day mean PCR is 0.60. Tuesday's reading sits 3.4 standard deviations below that average. Call volume is running at a multiple of put volume, the most skewed options posture the stock has seen all year.
Borrow market tightens, retail attention spikes
Availability in the lending market has dropped to 487%, down from 1,022% on October 2. The direction is clear: the pool of shares available to borrow has roughly halved relative to the position already lent out in three weeks. Cost to borrow remains low at 0.60%, though it has risen 16.6% over the past week.
ORTEX Alt Data shows retail attention, measured by the average of English Wikipedia page views and ORTEX stock page traffic on a log scale, reached 6.3 standard deviations above its 90-day average as of October 19. This is an attention measure, not a revenue indicator.
Analysts, earnings, and the acquisition story
The ORTEX short score has moved from 47.4 on October 12 to 52.6 on October 21, a steady drift upward as short positions accumulated.
Analyst coverage remains constructive. DA Davidson holds a Buy with a $42 target, trimmed from $44 on October 1. Piper Sandler carries an Overweight at $43. The consensus mean target is $42.83, against a close of $37.33.
The fundamental backdrop centres on Peoples Bancorp's acquisition pipeline. Pro forma assets are set to reach $14.3 billion following the Citizens and CBNK deals. Second-quarter 2026 core EPS came in at $0.96 against an $0.86 estimate. Net interest margin widened 7 basis points to 4.23%. The bear case points to rising criticized loans, at 4.01% of total loans, and deposit balance declines running at 10.0% annualised.
Shares gained 4.3% over the past week, ahead of the peer median of 2.6%. The next scheduled earnings date is January 19, 2027.
Data summary
- Short interest: 6.14% of free float, up 9.6% in one week, up 23.9% in one month
- Short shares: approximately 2.15 million as of October 21
- Put-call ratio: 0.12, 52-week low, 3.4 standard deviations below the 20-day mean of 0.60
- Borrow availability: 487%, down from 1,022% on October 2
- Cost to borrow: 0.60%, up 16.6% in one week
- ORTEX short score: 52.6, up from 47.4 on October 12
- Retail attention z-score: 6.3 (Wikipedia views and ORTEX page traffic, as of October 19)
- Share price: $37.33, up 4.3% over one week
- Consensus analyst target: $42.83
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Open PEBO on ORTEX →How this article was generated
- Generated
- 22 Oct 2026, 13:36
- Data as of
- 22 Oct 2026, 13:33
- Prompt version
- v1.0
- Data sources
- Short interestCost to borrowUtilizationOptions flowEarningsAnalyst consensusInstitutional 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.