FUBO enters May sitting in a strange middle ground: the stock is up 27% over the past month, the short position has been cut in half since early April, and yet every share in the lending pool remains fully spoken for.
The most striking shift in the data is how fast short sellers have retreated. Short interest measured 74% of the free float on April 9 — a reading consistent with extreme crowding. By May 5 it had collapsed to 24.2%. That is still a meaningful short position, but the pace of covering, roughly a 65% drop in raw shares shorted over less than four weeks, is the defining move of this period. Cost to borrow tells a similar story in reverse: it spiked to 13.3% in early April as the covering scramble hit, then settled back toward 5.7% once the acute pressure eased. Even so, that level is nearly triple where it was in late March, when borrow was running under 2%.
The lending market remains extremely tight despite the short interest decline. Availability is at just 0.47% of short interest — meaning for every 200 shares currently shorted, fewer than one share is still available to borrow. Every share in the lending pool has been lent out, a condition that has persisted for at least 30 consecutive sessions. That leaves virtually no room for new short positions to be established without displacing an existing one, and it sustains some residual squeeze pressure even as the overall short base shrinks. The ORTEX short score holds at 73.8, flagging this as a stock where borrow conditions warrant attention.
Options traders, by contrast, are not adding much caution to the mix. The put/call ratio at 0.27 is almost exactly in line with its 20-day average of 0.25, and the z-score near zero suggests no unusual hedging activity. The 52-week high on the PCR was 0.56, hit briefly on April 22 when the stock was in the middle of its sharp recovery — that defensive impulse has since faded entirely. For a name with 24% of its float shorted and borrow fully locked out, the options market looks remarkably unbothered.
The Street has tilted constructively since late March. Multiple analysts initiated or upgraded coverage in late March and early April, including a Barrington Research upgrade to Outperform and Wedbush raising its target sharply to $24. The consensus sits at five Buy-equivalent ratings, with a mean price target of $18.13 — roughly 46% above the May 5 close of $12.40. Bulls point to the Hulu Live merger synergies, a path toward $300 million EBITDA by FY28, and the potential to monetise viewing data. Bears counter that content costs remain the structural headwind, the path to profitability has shifted repeatedly, and the reverse stock split earlier this year flagged balance sheet stress. The stock now trades on a PE above 69x on trailing earnings, with EV/EBITDA near 3x — a mix that reflects recovery optimism rather than a deep-value setup.
Institutional flows add an interesting footnote. Charles Schwab's asset management arm reported adding over 2.6 million shares in the quarter ending April 1, becoming the largest disclosed holder at 9.7% of shares. Goldman Sachs added 1.27 million shares in the same window. Against that, insider data from January shows CEO David Gandler sold shares following an award — though the price at the time was roughly $2.55, well below current levels. That insider data is now more than 120 days stale and predates the stock's 5x move, so it offers limited read-through to current positioning.
The setup heading into the next trading week centres on whether the short base stabilises near 24% or continues its gradual drift lower, and whether the locked borrow market starts to ease as covering demand fades. Earnings were reported on May 6 — any commentary on subscriber trajectory and cash burn will determine whether the Street's $18 consensus target holds or gets revised materially in either direction.
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