LITS heads into its May 19 earnings print with short sellers in full retreat and options traders leaning more bullishly than at almost any point in the past year.
The clearest story this week is the collapse in short interest. Estimated shares short have fallen roughly 70% over the past week, dropping from around 155,000 at the start of May to just 47,000 — cutting the SI as a percentage of free float to a negligible 0.13%. That is not a meaningful short position by any standard. The rapid unwind suggests that whoever was building a bearish thesis earlier in the month has largely abandoned it ahead of the scheduled announcement.
Options positioning reinforces that tilt. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.0031 — a reading so close to zero it represents virtually no put demand at all. Against a 20-day mean of 0.0039, that puts the z-score at roughly -1.9, and the current reading matches the 52-week low. At the other end of the spectrum, the 52-week high was 0.92 — so the contrast in sentiment is stark. The options market is almost entirely call-side right now, reflecting a strongly bullish lean into the event.
Borrow conditions echo the short-side retreat. Cost to borrow has eased significantly — down more than 37% over the past week to 15.7% — after briefly spiking toward 25% in early May. Availability remains loose relative to the outstanding short position, with borrow utilization running around 3.75% against a 52-week peak of 100%. That peak availability tightness appears to have been a brief episode; the lending market has relaxed sharply since. There is no squeeze dynamic in place.
The institutional picture is mixed but not alarming. Renaissance Technologies and Vanguard were among firms adding shares in late 2025 and early 2026, while Citadel and Polar trimmed. The largest single holder, Alexander Schornstein at roughly 10%, reduced his position by around 690,000 shares last December. Insider data is stale — the most recent disclosed trade dates to December 2025, more than 145 days ago — so no current read is available on insider conviction. The stock has gained almost 10% on the week to close at $1.25, bucking the week's weakness seen across closest peers: CLRB fell 8.2%, ACET dropped 6.6%, and FRMM was down nearly 9%. That relative outperformance, while short positioning is unwinding, is a combination worth noting.
The short score of 35.3 (out of 100) has been broadly stable and is not flashing any extreme signal in either direction. The days-to-cover rank of 74 and utilization rank of 68 are moderately elevated percentile readings, but both are consistent with a stock that had more active borrowing earlier in the month and is now normalising. No analyst coverage data is available in the snapshot.
With earnings confirmed for May 19, the question is whether the recent one-month gain of around 8% and the week's outperformance against peers already reflect any pre-announcement optimism — or whether the near-zero put/call ratio simply reflects a thin options market with little two-sided activity.
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