BOTZ shorts double as options turn bullish

BOTZ, the Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF, enters mid-May carrying a striking split: short positions have doubled in a month, yet options traders have just turned their most bullish in over a year.

The short side has been aggressively repositioning. Short interest has risen 120% over the past month, reaching 2.82% of the float — up from under 1% in early April. The acceleration came in two distinct waves: the first pushed SI above 1.6% through mid-April, and the second, steeper leg arrived this week, with shares short rising 18% in five sessions alone. The ORTEX short score has edged up to 52.3, its highest reading in the recent window, reflecting that directional pressure is still building on the fund.

The borrow market confirms the increased demand. Cost to borrow has roughly doubled since early April, now running at 1.37% — a 28% jump on the week. That's still far from punishing territory, so shorts are not facing a squeeze in any meaningful sense. Availability, however, has tightened considerably. With borrow utilization at 81.6% — well above the sub-20% levels seen in early April and approaching the 52-week peak of 91% — the lending pool is meaningfully less slack than it was. Every new short that gets put on today finds a tighter market than the one opened six weeks ago.

The options picture tells a sharply different story. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.88, nearly 2.7 standard deviations below its 20-day mean of 1.05. That's the most call-heavy reading in over a year — the 52-week low on PCR is 0.30, so there's room to go further, but the directional shift is abrupt. For most of April, the PCR was running steadily above 1.0, reflecting persistent protective hedging. The reversal this week coincides with BOTZ gaining 5.1% on the week to close at $40.72, and a fresh narrative around the "second wave" of the AI ETF trade — coverage pointing to investors broadening beyond NVDA chips toward robotics and AI infrastructure names. Call buyers appear to be chasing that re-rating.

The divergence between shorts rebuilding and options sentiment flipping is the defining tension right now. One interpretation is that the short interest build is structural hedging by institutional players running long single-name AI exposure against the ETF — common practice with thematic funds. That would explain why borrow demand is rising even as call activity surges: the two crowds are not necessarily in disagreement about the outlook; they may simply be on different sides of a spread trade. The month-long price recovery — BOTZ is up nearly 15% in a month — supports the idea that the fund has been carried higher by genuine buying, not just short covering.

What to watch next is whether the PCR continues to compress or snaps back toward its prior range above 1.0: a sustained hold below 0.90 would suggest the shift in options sentiment is genuine rotation rather than a one-week flush of stale hedges.