Short interest in CVNA has exploded to a company record. Three distinct signals now converge on the same bearish thesis.
SI hit 47.7% of free float on May 11. That's up from 13.2% just one week earlier — a 372% surge in seven days.
The jump is striking. For context, CVNA's short interest sat between 13% and 15% throughout most of April. Something changed sharply in the first week of May.
The ORTEX short score reflects the move. It jumped from 36.9 on May 7 to 62.5 on May 8 — the sharpest single-day swing in the trailing history. Short score rank sits at the 12th percentile, meaning CVNA now ranks among the most aggressively shorted stocks in its universe.
On May 8, the put-call ratio hit 8.58. That was the 52-week high and 4.3 standard deviations above the 20-day mean of 1.33.
By May 11, the PCR had collapsed back to 0.89. That single-day spike now reads as a one-session panic flush rather than a sustained sentiment shift. Whether the protective-put hedging preceded or followed the short interest explosion is the key question.
Cost to borrow rose to 0.67% on May 11. That's up 64% in one week. Availability has tightened alongside the jump in short interest — when SI nearly quadruples in a week, the pool of available shares compresses relative to demand.
CTB at 0.67% is still low in absolute terms. Borrowing CVNA is not yet expensive. But the directional move — 64% in seven days — signals the lending market is adjusting to new demand.
Most analysts raised targets on April 30, following a positive earnings event. JP Morgan went to $465. Morgan Stanley lifted to $510. UBS set a $520 target.
Against that backdrop, BTIG's Marvin Fong cut his price target from $485 to $97 on May 11 — the same day short interest was being measured at 47.7% of float. That is a dramatic divergence from the rest of the Street.
The current price is $76.23. The mean analyst target is $93.
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