Intel Q4 Preview: Shorts Held Firm Through the Q3 Drop, Now Faces a Second Test

Intel reports Q4 results on October 29 with short sellers unmoved by the stock's brutal October correction, borrow conditions still frictionless, and a Street consensus that has shifted from outright hostility to something closer to uneasy patience.

Short interest has barely budged since the Q3 print on October 22, when the stock fell 6.5% in a single session. Borrowed shares ticked down fractionally to 169.3 million, equal to 3.55% of free float, within touching distance of the highest level ORTEX has recorded for this cycle. The month-on-month increase of 9.8% tells the more meaningful story: shorts built steadily through September and held through a print that already delivered bad news. That is a deliberate positioning choice, not a momentum accident. The lending market continues to offer no friction whatsoever. Availability remains essentially uncapped, with more than 5.2 billion shares available to lend, and borrow cost, while up 19% on the week to 0.45%, is still negligible in absolute terms. New shorts can enter at virtually no cost.

The options market is not adding much heat to that setup. The put/call ratio of 0.84 is slightly below its 20-day average of 0.86, producing a z-score of negative 0.75. Call volume is marginally dominant relative to recent norms, which is an unusual feature for a stock down 30% from its September peak. That mild call tilt, alongside a price that has stabilised near $87 after bouncing from Monday lows, suggests the market is not uniformly positioned for another leg lower, even if shorts are.

The analyst debate has sharpened in the days before this print. Susquehanna and TD Cowen both cut targets last week, moving to $105 and $95 respectively while keeping neutral ratings. The mean target of $117 now implies roughly 35% upside from the current price, but that figure is distorted by targets set before the October selloff and should be read with caution. JP Morgan's upgrade to Neutral from Underweight, at an $85 target, is the clearest read on where the least-enthusiastic part of the Street now stands: it sees limited further downside from here, but little reason to buy. The bull case rests on Q2's 25% revenue growth and expanding data centre momentum continuing into Q3; the bear case holds that the foundry ramp is highly execution-sensitive, that share loss continues even in an improving CPU market, and that the rally from the 2025 lows pulled too much forward. Factor scores offer one mild positive signal: EPS momentum ranks in the 88th percentile on a 90-day basis, suggesting estimate revisions have been running in Intel's favour even as the stock has sold off.

The company's own reaction history adds a sobering reference point. The last three quarterly prints produced day-one declines of 6.5%, 8.5%, and 10%, with five-day losses of 10% and 11% in the two most recent quarters for which full data is available. The stock is already down 30% from the September high. The question the October 29 print will answer is whether the Q3 selloff was the market pre-pricing weak results, or whether it was only the first instalment.