NBIS Bounces 11% But Short Sellers Aren't Blinking

Nebius Group snapped back 11% on Tuesday to close at $170.47, yet the short position has barely moved and the borrow market has quietly loosened further, leaving the stock caught between a sharp one-day recovery and a short base that has absorbed the entire selloff without flinching.

Short interest at 22% of free float is the defining feature of this tape. The figure has risen 5.3% over the past week to roughly 48.1 million shares, even as the stock fell 33% from its September highs. That is the important detail: shorts did not cover into the drawdown. They added. The FINRA fortnightly figure, settled as of October 15, independently confirms 47.6 million shares short with 2.4 days to cover, so this is not an estimate artifact. The ORTEX short score of 68.3 places the stock in the bottom 6th percentile of the universe on this measure, reflecting both the level and the persistence of the position.

The borrow market tells a more nuanced story. Availability has risen sharply, climbing to 61% from 42% just two days ago, and up from a 52-week low of 0.63%. That low, reached earlier in the year, was the point at which every share in the lending pool was effectively spoken for. The current reading means meaningful room has opened back up. Cost to borrow has fallen alongside, now at 0.65%, down 5.5% on the week and 15% over the past month. For the bears, the lending market is cooperating: adding to a short position in NBIS is cheaper and easier than it has been for most of the year. Options positioning offers little to contradict that. The put/call ratio at 0.90 sits almost exactly at its 20-day average of 0.897, with a z-score near zero. After a period when the PCR touched 0.94 to 0.94 range through mid-October, the options market has settled into a neutral stance rather than turning defensive on the bounce.

The Street remains deeply split on NBIS, and Tuesday's 11% move does little to resolve the debate. The bull case rests on genuine hypergrowth: $582 million in Q2 revenue, up 454% year-on-year, a 40.6% adjusted EBITDA margin, and a contracted backlog exceeding $40 billion anchored by a $17 billion Microsoft agreement. The analyst consensus remains constructive on paper, with a mean price target around $281 against the current price. But that headline figure masks a wide dispersion. The Piper Sandler target, cut to $185 last week, sits barely above where the stock is trading. Rothschild has a Sell rating with an $84 target. At the other end, BNP Paribas has $399 and Truist Securities has $355. The EPS momentum factor scores of 89 (30-day) and 95 (90-day) confirm that estimate revisions have been running strongly positive, and the analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 100th percentile. But the bear case is equally concrete: free cash flow was negative $3.41 billion in Q2 alone, capex guidance for the year is $20 billion to $25 billion against revenue of $3 billion to $3.4 billion, and the stock's PB ratio has contracted by 1.7 turns over the past 30 days as the price fell.

The ownership register adds texture. NVIDIA holds 9.3% per its July 13G filing, making it the second-largest disclosed holder after founder Arkady Volozh at 10.7%. Goldman Sachs added 3.2 million shares in the quarter ended September 30 and now holds 4.65% of shares. BlackRock added 1.6 million shares in the same period. Situational Awareness LP and Lone Pine Capital both built positions from scratch in Q2. These are meaningful institutional accumulation signals into a drawdown. The caveat from the activist register is worth carrying: Goldman's 13G/A filed October 7 showed its stake declining from 10.5% to 5.1%, so at least part of the September quarter addition was covering a prior reduction. Orbis, which filed a 13G in February 2025, has since fallen to 1.5% from 5.9%, and as a 13G filer may have continued selling without further disclosure.

The recent insider activity is all pre-arranged. Director Arne Grimme has been buying roughly 150 to 360 shares daily under a 10b5-1 plan throughout October, accumulating around $220,000 at prices between $154 and $170. Director Boynton sold 900 shares on October 15 at prices between $169 and $179, also under a plan. Neither move carries the conviction signal of a discretionary trade. The 90-day insider net is a sale of $142 million in value, a figure worth noting even though most of it almost certainly reflects larger pre-planned transactions not visible in the recent window.

Wikipedia attention for NBIS is running at a z-score of 1.8 against its own 90-day history, the highest retail attention reading in the dataset's window. That kind of spike has historically tracked price volatility rather than direction. With Q3 results scheduled for November 12, now 15 days away, the next session that matters is not tomorrow's open but the print that will either validate or challenge the $40 billion backlog narrative the bulls are leaning on.