Why this matters — Three distinct ORTEX data streams have converged on COHR within days. Short interest, options sentiment, and cost-to-borrow all moved sharply — though not all in the same direction.
Short Interest surge. COHR's SI % of Free Float stands at 6.0% as of April 24. That is up 75% over the past month. The jump is stark: short shares rose from roughly 5.4M in mid-March to 9.5M by late April. FINRA's fortnightly data confirms 9.67M shares short as of April 15, with days to cover at 1.74.
Options sentiment at a 52-week extreme. The put/call ratio hit 1.13 on April 24 — a 52-week high. The 20-day average sits at 0.86. The current reading carries a z-score of 2.08, placing it more than two standard deviations above the recent mean. Put buying has accelerated steadily since early April, when the PCR was below 0.74.
Cost to borrow collapses. Despite the SI build-up, the cost to borrow fell 51% in one week to just 0.20% APR. That is the lowest level in the 30-day snapshot. This divergence is notable. Shares are becoming easier and cheaper to borrow even as short positions grow.
Analysts are raising targets aggressively. Citigroup lifted its price target from $250 to $420 on April 21, maintaining a Buy. JP Morgan raised to $300. Barclays raised to $350. The consensus target sits at $313.50 — below the current price of $336.09. FMR LLC added over 10.6M shares in Q1, making it the largest holder at 11.9% of shares. Insider activity runs in the opposite direction: all recent trades over the past 90 days are sales, with net selling of approximately $4.9M in value. Utilisation has dropped sharply from a 52-week high of 13.25% in late March to just 3.16% now.
In mid-to-late March, short interest peaked near 11.6M shares and utilisation hit 13.25%. Both metrics then unwound rapidly — shares short fell back to ~5.4M by March 20 before rebuilding. The current build-up mirrors that earlier accumulation phase, while the collapsing CTB echoes the conditions that preceded the March unwind.
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