Bears Press Liquidia, Cerebras and Hertz Hard

Short sellers stepped up pressure on several mid-cap names this week, with LQDA (Liquidia Corporation) seeing the biggest notable move among larger stocks. Its SI % of FF jumped 8 percentage points in seven days to 26.6%. The cost to borrow remains low at 0.46%, suggesting the short thesis is building organically rather than under squeeze pressure.

CBRS (Cerebras Systems) is another new entrant drawing attention. Short interest climbed more than 5 percentage points to 20.1% of free float. Availability sits at 84%, so there is still room for more shorts to pile in.

HTZ (Hertz Global Holdings) remains the most striking name in the broader universe. Short interest stands at 73.5% of free float. The cost to borrow has hit 149.6% APR. Availability is zero. That combination makes it extremely difficult and expensive to add new short positions.

EVCM (EverCommerce) leads the ORTEX short score table at 97 out of 100. Days to cover sit at 23.5. The cost to borrow is 87.6%. Its share price has fallen 25% over three months.

On the other side, short covering drove SVRA (Savara) down nearly 11 percentage points to 25.7% of FF. PCRX (Pacira BioSciences) dropped 9 points to 9.6%.

Today is also the Russell 2000 rank date for the December review. Per ORTEX Index Rebalance Radar, LTH (Life Time Group Holdings) surged to 90% deletion probability overnight, with $901M of estimated forced selling. UMB Financial faces a similar risk. Both names may see elevated short-side activity heading into the November 13 announcement.