Moelis Shorts Retreat Further as Analysts Cut Targets Into November Print

Moelis & Company enters its November 5 earnings date with short sellers pulling back sharply, even as the Street has spent October marking down price targets across the board.

Short interest has dropped 16.4% over the past week to 6.7% of the free float, a move that ORTEX data puts 1.7 standard deviations below the company's typical weekly change over the past year. That is a material unwind. From mid-October, when shorts were running above 8% of the float, nearly a fifth of the position has been covered in two weeks. The borrow market tells the same story: availability is at 1,191%, meaning roughly twelve shares are sitting ready to lend for every one currently borrowed. The cost to borrow has crept up 25% on the week to 0.51%, but that remains a negligible rate in absolute terms and well below anything that would signal squeeze pressure. The ORTEX short score has declined alongside the position, falling from 52.8 on October 16 to 47.8 on Tuesday, drifting below the neutral midpoint.

Options positioning is mildly more defensive than usual, though not dramatically so. The put/call ratio is at 0.55, modestly above its 20-day average of 0.45, with a z-score of 0.94. That puts it well within one standard deviation of normal. For context, the 52-week high on the PCR is 1.24, so current levels are far from the kind of protective crowding that would flag serious anxiety ahead of a print. The options picture is cautious at the margin, not alarmed.

The analyst community has spent October lowering targets while largely holding its ratings. JP Morgan cut its target to $68 from $70 on Tuesday while staying at Neutral. Goldman Sachs trimmed to $62 from $71 earlier in the month. Morgan Stanley lowered to $77 from $85 on October 8, keeping its Overweight rating. UBS moved the other direction on ratings, upgrading from Sell to Neutral on October 7 while edging the target slightly lower to $59. The mean target across the Street is $67.30 against a current price of $55.88, implying roughly 20% of headroom. But the direction of travel in October has been firmly downward on targets, even where conviction on the rating has not shifted. The factor score on analyst recommendation divergence sits at the 97th percentile, the highest individual score in the snapshot, which reflects how wide the range of views remains across covering firms.

The broader independent advisory group has rallied this week alongside MC. LAZ gained 4.1% on the week and PJT added 4.3%, both roughly in line with MC's 3.8% move. EVR gained 3.1% and ARES led the group at 5.1%. MC is not lagging its peers, but it is not leading either, despite having the sharpest short-covering dynamic in the group. BlackRock lifted its stake to 12.2% of shares as of September 30, adding 647,000 shares in the quarter, the largest addition among top holders. Columbia Management added nearly 200,000 shares in the same period. On the other side, Kayne Anderson Rudnick has been trimming, filing a 13G/A in May showing its stake had fallen from 9.1% to 7.9%, though as last disclosed it still held 7.3% of shares.

Wikipedia attention for MC spiked to a z-score of 3.3 against the prior 90-day average around October 10, the highest retail attention reading in the alt data window. That kind of spike in public attention around a mid-cap advisory firm typically follows a notable news event rather than routine trading. Whether it corresponded to the earnings-season news cycle or something more specific is not stated, but it is worth noting the timing, roughly three weeks before the November 5 print.

The last earnings release in July produced a one-day move of just 0.35% down and a five-day drift of 1.3% higher, a muted reaction for a firm that reported 41% sequential revenue growth. The November 5 report is therefore the next concrete moment to watch: specifically whether the sponsor backlog weakness flagged in July has stabilised, and whether the record pipeline the firm cited translates into another revenue beat or gets pushed into 2027.