Opendoor Down 29% in a Month as Shorts Hold Firm Into Earnings

OPEN fell another 3.3% on Tuesday to close at $1.74, extending a month-long slide of nearly 29% that has taken the stock to its lowest levels of the year. The timing is sharp: the company reports Q3 results on November 5, with shorts sitting on 29.4% of the free float and options traders showing the most defensive posture in months.

Short positioning has barely budged despite the price collapse, which is the most striking feature of the setup. Short interest rose 1.5% over the past week to roughly 227 million shares, or 29.4% of the free float, up about 5.7% over the past month. The ORTEX short score has crept to 75.5, its highest reading in the past ten sessions. That persistence matters: shorts are not covering into weakness, which means the decline has not been driven by a forced unwind. Availability in the lending pool tightened to 46.8%, down from 52.7% a week ago, though cost to borrow remains negligible at 0.83%. There is no squeeze pressure here. Borrowing is cheap and available, and the short position looks structural rather than speculative.

Options traders have turned more defensive than at any point in recent months. The put/call ratio reached 0.14 on Tuesday, more than two standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.11. That is an unusually high reading for a stock whose options market has historically skewed heavily toward calls. The 52-week high on the PCR is 0.62, so at 0.14 the absolute level is still low, but the relative jump into Wednesday's earnings is notable. Investors who normally lean bullish through options have shifted their weight.

The analyst picture is bleak and deteriorating. UBS cut its target almost in half on October 28, moving from $4.50 to $2.00 while keeping a Neutral rating. JP Morgan lowered its target from $8.00 to $7.00 in September, maintaining Overweight, a rating now sitting well above where the stock trades. The consensus mean target of $3.91 implies roughly 125% upside from current levels, but that figure is stretched by targets set before the latest leg down and before UBS's sharp revision. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods had an Underperform with a $2.65 target as of July, and that now looks closer to fair value than the consensus. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 98th percentile, meaning the company has historically beaten estimates at an unusually high rate. The EPS momentum scores for 30 and 90 days rank in the bottom single digits, so recent estimate revisions have moved in one direction only.

Retail attention has also faded sharply. The ORTEX alt data Wikipedia views signal for Opendoor shows a z-score of negative 2.7 against its own 90-day history as of late October, meaning the stock is drawing significantly less casual attention than it was. That matters going into an earnings print where sentiment already leans negative.

One activist thread worth noting: Access Industries filed a Schedule 13D/A in September 2025 declaring a stake that has since declined from 5.76% to 2.38% of the class. That filing is on the 13D activist register, though the position has clearly been reduced. Under SEC disclosure rules, positions are as-last-filed, and holders who drop below 5% are under no obligation to file again, so the current actual level could be lower still.

The earnings history adds another layer of caution. The last Q3 report in August 2026 produced a one-day decline of 7.3% and a five-day decline of 2.9%. The prior print in August also fell 4.6% on the day and 9.1% over the following week. The pattern across the last four reported events is uniformly negative on both the one-day and five-day horizons.

The number to watch on November 5 is the contribution margin per home sold. That single figure is what determines whether the iBuying model is approaching unit economics that justify the equity. With the stock at $1.74, shorts holding near 30% of the float, and no sign of covering, the results need to clear a high bar just to stabilise the price.