Short sellers piled into POET Technologies last week. Four distinct ORTEX signals fired in the same window — and they all point in the same direction.
Cost to borrow is the standout. CTB hit 8.33% as of April 30. A month ago it sat at just 1.31%. That is a 539% jump in 30 days.
The borrow market is tight. Availability has compressed as the lending pool fills up. Utilization peaked at 94% on April 28 — against a 52-week high of 100% — before easing marginally to 83% by April 30. The ORTEX utilization rank sits at the 6th percentile, meaning nearly all comparable stocks have more borrow supply available. Every uptick in short demand now competes for a shrinking pool of lendable shares.
Short interest itself is material. SI hit 10.28% of free float as of April 30. That followed a violent intra-week spike — shares short briefly touched 16.4 million on April 28 before pulling back to 13.5 million. The one-week change is still up 9%.
The put/call ratio reached 0.2265 on May 1 — the highest level in 52 weeks. The 20-day mean PCR was just 0.136. The current reading sits 1.94 standard deviations above that mean.
Before late April, PCR had been anchored between 0.09 and 0.12 for most of the prior month. The jump was abrupt. Options positioning shifted materially in the same window that borrow costs exploded.
The ORTEX short score stands at 63.7. That is up from 60.2 ten days ago — a steady climb. The short score rank sits at the 5th percentile, placing POET among the most heavily shorted names in its peer group.
Earnings are due May 6. POET's last four earnings events all produced large moves: +20.1%, +10.2%, +10.2%, and -12.9% on the day. The five-day windows were similarly volatile. The current analyst consensus price target is $8.20 — above the May 1 close of $7.31.
Insider activity adds one more layer. The CFO sold $1.78 million in October 2025 at $7.50. A chief-level officer sold a further $362,500 in March 2026 at $7.25. No insider purchases appear in the data.
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