Energy Transfer Sits Near the Middle of Its Peer Group on Short Positioning

Among the closest midstream peers, ET's short positioning is one of the lightest in the group. OKE, EPD, and TRGP all carry heavier short interest relative to their floats. ET's own SI stands at 0.78% of the free float, around 27 million shares, and has barely moved over the past month despite a 5% rise in the unit price.

The borrow market for ET is essentially open. More than 1.3 billion shares are available to lend, a ratio so large that availability is not a constraint for anyone wanting to build a short position. What has moved is the cost of doing so: the fee to borrow ET units climbed to 0.86% on October 29, up from near zero just a week earlier. That is still a low absolute rate, but the direction of travel is sharp, more than tripling in five days. It bears watching whether that move persists through and after the November 3 print.

The one genuinely interesting data point heading into tomorrow's release is also the one that has not changed: Kelcy Warren's open-market purchases in August, 1 million units bought across two days at $21.26 to $21.27 without a pre-arranged trading plan, remain on the books. At the current price of $20.91, those purchases are underwater. Nothing in the short interest data or the lending market contradicts the conviction signal those trades represent; the lack of any meaningful short build is, in its own way, a corroboration.

The November 3 print is therefore less a test of whether ET is operationally sound and more a test of whether its fee-based cash flows justify a unit price that has lagged Warren's entry point while the broader midstream group, including TRGP up 4.2% on the week and VG up 5.6%, has continued to grind higher.