MSTR just posted Q1 earnings and the stock is up 13% on the week — but the more interesting story is how shorts have been quietly covering into the rally, even as analysts send contradictory signals on where the Bitcoin treasury play goes next.
Short interest has fallen meaningfully over the past five weeks. SI as a percentage of free float has dropped from around 11.7% in early April to 10.7% today — a steady, deliberate unwind rather than a panic squeeze. Raw short shares are off roughly 6% over the past month. The borrow market reflects none of the urgency you'd associate with a forced exit: cost to borrow is barely above 0.45%, one of the cheapest levels in the past six weeks, and availability remains well above the tight zone. This looks like shorts choosing to step aside in front of a rising Bitcoin price, not getting run over.
Options tell a bullish-leaning story. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.88, roughly 1.3 standard deviations below its 20-day mean of 0.92. That is close to its 52-week low of 0.76, meaning call demand is running well above average relative to puts. The signal is consistent with the broader move: traders are positioning for more upside, not hedging into results. After Q4, the stock jumped 12% the following day — and the Q1 report, which came in Tuesday after the close, delivered sales of $124m that beat estimates. Saylor also flagged on the earnings call that Strategy would consider selling some Bitcoin to "inoculate" the market, a comment that landed without derailing the rally.
The analyst picture is split — not on direction, but on how much upside is left. Benchmark cut its target from $705 to $570 this week while keeping its Buy. BTIG moved in the opposite direction, raising its target from $250 to $350, also Buy. Those two moves in the same session capture the positioning well: bulls still believe in the Bitcoin accumulation thesis, but the wide target range — from $212 (Cantor Fitzgerald, raised just two weeks ago) to $570 — reflects genuine disagreement about what a fair NAV premium looks like for a company whose enterprise value is over $51bn. The ORTEX MSTR short score of 58.8 is moderate — sitting in just the 14th percentile of its sector — which aligns with a stock where the bearish thesis has been losing ground even as it hasn't disappeared.
Institutional flows add texture to the bull case. Capital Research and Management added over 10 million shares in Q1 to hold 8.8% of the company. Vanguard added 4.2 million shares. BlackRock added another 750,000 as recently as April 30. These are not tactical bets — large passive and active managers are increasing structural exposure to MSTR as a Bitcoin proxy. Michael Saylor himself holds 5.7% and barely touched his position last quarter. The insider activity worth noting is a director, Jarrod Patten, who sold small tranches systematically through April and May — low-significance, likely a pre-arranged plan, not a directional read.
Peer crypto-adjacent names have moved sharply alongside MSTR. BTBT is up 18% on the week, RIOT up 23%, and MARA up 10%. MSTR's 13% gain is notable because it is lagging some of the smaller miners — the same pattern seen when Bitcoin itself rallies and mining leverage outperforms the treasury-holding model at the margin. The next scheduled event is June 8, which will be the next opportunity for management to update on Bitcoin purchases and any capital markets activity around STRC, the company's newly introduced preferred security. The gap between where analysts see fair value and the current $187 price — the mean target across all recent changes implies roughly double the current level — is the number worth watching as the Bitcoin price continues to set the pace.
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