OCG — Oriental Culture Holding — heads into mid-May with its borrow market in a state of acute stress, sitting sharply at odds with a short interest percentage that remains modest on its own terms.
The cost to borrow has become the defining story here. It exploded from roughly 15% APR in late April to 175% at its peak on May 7, before easing slightly to 118% by Tuesday. That is a sevenfold move in under two weeks, driven by a surge in short interest that peaked at roughly 420,000 shares shorted in early April before collapsing and then violently rebounding. The week-on-week change in shares short printed at over 1,600% — not a typo, but the result of shares short collapsing to near-zero around May 4 and then jumping back to 124,000 by May 12. Short interest now runs at 6.4% of the free float, meaningful for a stock with a market cap of just $3.6 million.
Availability in the lending pool tells a more nuanced story than the cost alone. At 105% of estimated short interest, the ratio suggests there are still roughly as many shares available to borrow as are currently borrowed — not a fully exhausted lending pool, but far from comfortable. The 52-week high for the borrow market's utilization reached 100% as recently as April 23-24, meaning the pool was completely drained twice in the past month. That borrow-market memory matters: lenders know the squeeze can return quickly. The ORTEX short score has climbed to 68.5 this week, up from 52.7 on May 4 — a sharp reset higher that reflects the renewed pressure in the borrow market and the volatility in short positioning.
The price action reinforces the tension. OCG closed at $1.86 on May 12, up 10% on the week, with the one-month gain a far more modest 2%. The stock is operating in volatile territory. The last four earnings events showed sharp same-day moves but ugly five-day follow-throughs: after the most recent April 24 print, the stock gained 7.2% on the day but lost 6.3% over the following five sessions. The event before that saw a near-zero one-day move followed by a 77% collapse over five days — extreme even by micro-cap standards.
Peer context adds colour. Closest Nasdaq-listed peer AEHL — Antelope Enterprise Holdings — jumped 47.5% on Tuesday alone and is up more than 318% on the week. AEHL carries a short interest of 75.7% of free float and a cost to borrow of 723% APR, with availability at zero — a fully depleted lending pool. OCG and AEHL share the same corner of the Nasdaq micro-cap arena, and moves of that magnitude in a correlated name tend to pull attention — and positioning — across the group.
Options data from the snapshot is too stale to use (last dated October 2023), and the institutional holder list runs to just six names with tiny positions, none of which have reported a change recently. Neither angle adds material information for this week's setup.
What to watch: whether the borrow cost holds above 100% into next week, whether the short score continues its recovery toward the mid-70s range, and whether AEHL's extraordinary squeeze this week draws renewed short or long flows into OCG as the closest listed peer.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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