FPX — the First Trust US Equity Opportunities ETF — is closing the week at $188.60, up over 7% in five sessions and nearly 16% over the past month. What makes the setup striking is not the rally itself but what the short-side and options data have done alongside it: bears have backed off sharply, and the options market has swung to its most call-heavy posture in over a year.
The clearest signal this week is the rapid capitulation in short positioning. Shares short peaked near 43,700 in the final week of April — a level roughly five times where they had been in late March. Since then, the position has collapsed. Short interest fell nearly 69% week-on-week to around 11,400 shares by May 5. As a percentage of float, that is a minimal 0.16%. This is not a heavily shorted vehicle, but the spike-and-retreat pattern in mid-to-late April suggests traders were building tactical downside hedges into market volatility and are now unwinding them as prices recover. The ORTEX short score has moved accordingly — dropping from 47.2 on April 27 to 30.8 by May 5, the lowest reading in the dataset and a decisive break below the 40-45 range where it had been anchored for most of April.
The lending market reflects the same easing. Borrow availability has loosened dramatically. The lending pool's utilisation dropped from above 50% through much of late April to just 11% — meaning the vast majority of shares available for lending are now sitting idle, with shorts returned and few new positions being opened. Cost to borrow has also drifted lower, easing to around 2.7% after spending most of April in the 3.1–3.6% range. Conditions for shorting FPX are entirely comfortable now, but almost nobody is bothering.
Options positioning tells the same story from a different angle. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.61 — more than 1.3 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.88. As recently as early April, the PCR was running above 1.15, close to its 52-week high of 1.17, meaning there were more puts than calls outstanding. That defensive overhang has fully cleared. The market is now positioned for further upside rather than hedging against drawdown. The shift from a PCR above 1.1 in the tariff-anxiety period to below 0.62 today tracks almost perfectly with the reversal in short interest — both signals pointing the same direction at roughly the same speed.
FPX offers no analyst coverage or valuation multiples to assess in conventional terms — as an ETF, it is a rules-based vehicle tracking US equity opportunities rather than a company with earnings to forecast. The most recent dividend was a modest $0.078 in early 2026, consistent with this fund's history of small, irregular distributions. What matters most for interpreting the week's data is the macro context: FPX's rapid short buildup in mid-to-late April coincided with peak trade-war anxiety, and the equally rapid unwind through early May aligns with the broader US equity relief rally.
Overall, the positioning picture has shifted cleanly from defensive to neutral-to-positive. Shorts have left, puts have been replaced by calls, and borrowing costs have eased. The question worth watching is whether this week's broad equity recovery holds — because the speed of the short-side reversal in FPX leaves little in the way of residual bearish pressure to act as a buffer if sentiment turns again.
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