A split signal has emerged on BHP. Every share in the lending pool has been lent out for weeks. Yet options traders just turned their most bullish in a year.
Availability on BHP has been at or near 0% since late April. That means every share available to borrow is currently lent out — the tightest the borrow market has been in the past 52 weeks.
This is not a one-day spike. The lending pool was fully exhausted on April 20 and has remained there through May 1. The only brief exception was April 16–17, when availability briefly loosened to roughly 12–20% before snapping shut again.
Short interest itself has climbed. Estimated shares short reached 15.9 million as of May 1. That's up 2.3% over the week and driven by a step-change in mid-April when positions jumped from around 14 million to above 15 million shares. Over the past month, however, short interest is down 10.3% — the late-March peak was above 18 million shares.
Cost to borrow sits at 1.58% APR. That's modest, and notably it has fallen 28% over the past week and 31% over the past month. Cheap borrow costs alongside maxed-out availability is an unusual combination — it suggests the lending pool is small, not that borrow demand has suddenly surged.
The options market is sending a starkly different signal. BHP's put/call ratio dropped to 0.67 on May 4 — the lowest reading in 52 weeks. The 20-day average PCR is 0.76. The current reading sits nearly 3 standard deviations below that mean (z-score: -2.96).
That's a sharp rotation. As recently as late April, the PCR was above 0.78. Over the past two weeks it has fallen almost continuously. Options traders are building call exposure at a rate not seen in the past year.
The stock closed at $77.87 on May 4, down 1.5% on the day and 2.5% over the week — but up 6.3% over the past month. The post-earnings reaction on May 3 was a -1.5% move.
The ORTEX short score stands at 52.3 — a middling reading, not extreme. The dividend score ranks at the 92nd percentile, reflecting BHP's status as a yield-focused name. Forward EPS estimates year-on-year are at the 99th percentile for growth, though the 30-day EPS momentum is soft at the 21st percentile.
Institutional holders are broadly adding. BlackRock added 1.5 million shares as of March 31. Vanguard added 1.6 million. JP Morgan Asset Management added 2.0 million over the same period. The picture is one of passive and active accumulation at the institutional level.
The tension is between a locked-up borrow market — implying sustained short conviction — and options positioning that is turning decidedly bullish. Next earnings: August 17.
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