LCID shares are priced at $6.54 — down 31% over the past month. The lending market behind those shares has reached a breaking point.
Availability has collapsed to 0%. Every share in the lending pool is currently lent out. That matches the 52-week maximum and means new short positions are essentially impossible to establish through conventional borrow channels.
Short sellers who want to hold their positions are now paying for it. Cost to borrow hit 15.86% on April 30. That is up 86% in a single week — from around 8.3% on April 29 to nearly double overnight.
The spike is sharp but not historically extreme for LCID. CTB touched 33.3% on April 14 and sat above 22% for most of March. The current level represents a rebound off the recent low, not a fresh all-time record.
What makes it notable is the direction. Borrow costs had drifted down from March highs into late April — then snapped back hard as availability drained to zero.
SI stands at 14.3% of free float as of April 30. That is material. It has risen 7.4% over the past month.
The ORTEX short score sits at 76.3 — a high reading, though it has eased from 80.1 on April 17. The utilization rank is the 1st percentile across all stocks. The short score rank is 2nd percentile. Both flag this as one of the tightest borrow situations in the market.
LCID reports earnings on May 5. That context matters here. The options market is reflecting hedging pressure: the put/call ratio stands at 1.33, below its 20-day mean of 1.51. The PCR z-score is -1.1, meaning calls have been gaining relative to recent norms — some traders are positioning for an upside surprise.
The last two earnings events produced moves of -7.3% and +8.9% on the day. The outcome was not one-sided.
Analysts have been trimming targets ahead of the print. TD Cowen cut from $19 to $10 on April 15. Baird moved from $14 to $12 the same day. The consensus mean target is $12.77 — nearly double the current price, but most of that gap reflects Neutral-to-Hold ratings, not conviction buys.
Uber's stake in LCID is worth noting. The company disclosed a holding of 37.75 million shares as of April 14 — acquired in a strategic partnership — and added 24 million shares in the most recent reported period.
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