Short sellers pushed HTCO (High-Trend International Group) into a full lending-market lockout. Every share in the borrow pool is effectively lent out. Cost to borrow has exploded 3,429% in a month.
Availability has collapsed to near zero. HTCO's utilization sat at 99.74% as of April 30 — just off the 100% 52-week high hit on April 28. In practical terms, there is almost nothing left in the lending pool for new short positions.
Cost to borrow peaked at 200.8% APR on April 28. It has since eased to 118%, but that still represents a 3,429% rise over the past month. On March 20, CTB was just 1.9%.
The catalyst was clear. HTCO crashed 78.8% on April 28. Short interest spiked 154% in a single week, hitting 960,843 shares. The rush to borrow shares drove availability to zero and sent CTB to extremes.
Short shares have since pulled back. ORTEX estimates 591,338 shares short as of April 30, down from the peak. Float data is unavailable, so SI as a percentage of free float cannot be calculated. The ORTEX short score sits at 82.0 — a high reading sustained across the past two weeks.
Days to cover stands at 1.57, per FINRA data as of April 15. The official FINRA fortnightly print showed 787,818 shares short at settlement.
Top holder Jinyu Chang holds 34.4% of shares. John Fife added 652,883 shares as of January 16. Streeterville Capital initiated a position of 22,883 shares as recently as April 29.
With heavily concentrated ownership and a locked borrow market, the free float available to new short sellers is structurally limited. That has amplified the cost-to-borrow spike.
What to watch: CTB at 118% remains extreme. Any further buying pressure on a locked borrow market could push availability back to zero and CTB back toward its April 28 peak.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open HTCO 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.
