Why this matters — Three distinct ORTEX data streams converged on AKAN (Akanda Corp.) simultaneously: short interest, cost to borrow, and utilisation all hit extreme readings within the same 24-hour window. The stock gained 245% in a single week, making this one of the most acute short-pressure setups in the current market.
Short Interest spike. SI % FF hit 29.7% as of April 24, up 328% over the prior week and 772% over the past month. From mid-March — when short interest sat near 10,000–25,000 shares — borrowed positions exploded past 240,000 shares by April 23 before a partial unwind. The one-week build remains extraordinary for a stock of this size.
Cost to Borrow explosion. CTB reached 830% APR on April 24. A week earlier it stood at 79%. That is a 954% rise in seven days. The trajectory is near-vertical: 68% on April 21, 204% on April 22, 540% on April 23, and 830% on April 24. Lenders are pricing in extreme borrow scarcity.
Utilisation near maximum. Utilisation hit 94.02% on April 24, just off the 52-week high of 100% recorded on April 15. As recently as late March, utilisation was below 2%. The near-total exhaustion of available borrow supply, combined with rising short interest, confirms lenders have little inventory left to deploy.
ORTEX's Short Score reached 81.0 on April 23, its highest point in the visible history. The utilisation rank stands at the 2nd percentile — meaning almost no stock in the universe has higher relative utilisation pressure. The stock also faces a confirmed earnings event on April 30, injecting event risk directly into the middle of this short-pressure window. Peers SNDL and SPRC showed notable one-week moves of their own (flat and +51% respectively), suggesting elevated volatility across the small-cap cannabis/pharma space.
Utilisation reached 100% as recently as April 15. Short interest was already building through late March. This is not AKAN's first elevated-borrow episode — but the speed of the current CTB move (from ~75% to 830% in eight days) has no recent precedent in the visible history.
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