Bond ETF sees short positions expand to 19.6M shares amid subdued utilisation. Cost to borrow ticked up 20% over 30 days. Options sentiment turned bearish this week.
AGG closed at $99.59 on April 24, up 0.14% on the day. The iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF slipped 0.26% over the past week. The fund has gained 0.84% over the past month.
Short interest stood at 19.63M shares on April 23, representing 1.46% of the float. Shares short rose 14.1% over the past 30 days. The position expanded from 16.89M shares in mid-March to peak at 20.9M on April 10 before pulling back to current levels. Official FINRA data from April 15 reported 17.95M shares short with 1.78 days to cover.
Cost to borrow averaged 0.46% on April 23. CTB jumped 20.5% over the past month, climbing from 0.39% in late March. The rate hit a recent high of 0.53% on April 6. Over the past week CTB fell 8.4%.
Utilisation registered 6.34% on April 23. The metric reached 8.98% on April 6, the highest reading in the past month. Utilisation touched 11.7% on March 20 and peaked at 29.17% over the past 52 weeks.
ORTEX short score stood at 31.65 on April 23, down slightly from 32.51 on April 10.
Put/call ratio dropped to 0.64 on April 24. The 20-day mean PCR stands at 1.74 with a standard deviation of 1.23. The current reading sits 0.89 standard deviations below the mean, signaling a shift toward call activity. PCR hit a 52-week high of 5.88 on March 31 and a low of 0.04 in mid-March. The ratio oscillated between 0.16 and 2.33 over the past month.
Edward Jones Trust trimmed its stake by 5.36M shares to 138.56M, representing 10.55% of shares. Raymond James added 5.51M shares to reach 84.76M. Wells Fargo reduced its position by 2.95M shares to 59.95M. BlackRock increased its holding by 332,512 shares to 54.21M as of March 31.
Bank of America added 4.39M shares to reach 21.04M. Northern Trust Global Investments increased its position by 4.15M shares to 20.71M. Managed Account Advisors built its stake by 2.42M shares to 24.61M. Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services cut 4.70M shares, dropping to 14.93M.
The ETF most recently reported earnings on November 5, 2025. Dividend payments of $0.34 and $0.32 were announced in September 2025 for April and March 2026 distributions.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open AGG on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
