Palantir Technologies heads into the week of May 13 with a striking divergence: options traders are the most bullish they've been in months, yet short sellers have been quietly adding to positions at the fastest pace in over a month.
The clearest shift this week is in the options market. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.997 — more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 1.07 — marking the most call-heavy positioning seen in recent memory. Across the past 30 days, the PCR ran consistently above 1.0, meaning puts dominated; the flip below parity this week represents a genuine rotation toward upside bets. That's the lowest reading since the 52-week floor of 0.61 was briefly touched, and it sits well clear of the bearish extreme of 1.16 set in April. Options traders are not hedging into next month's earnings — they appear to be reaching for gains.
Short interest, however, tells a more complicated story. Shorts added aggressively over the past week, with short interest climbing 13.8% in seven days to 61.2 million shares, equivalent to 2.7% of the free float. That monthly gain of 21.7% is the largest accumulation in the observable data window. Notably, the step-up happened in a single burst around May 8-11, when positions jumped from roughly 55 million to 61 million shares. Cost to borrow has actually eased sharply on the week, falling 22% to a very low 0.29% annualised. Availability remains extremely loose at around 7,400% of short interest — far above normal — meaning supply of lendable shares is not a constraint. Bears are building, but they're doing so cheaply and without friction.
The Street is split and the valuation debate is the centrepiece. Citigroup's Tyler Radke raised his target to $225 this week, maintaining Buy, while Wedbush held at $230 Outperform and Rosenblatt lifted to $225. Those bulls point to Palantir's accelerating U.S. commercial business and a projected ~70% CAGR in operating income through 2030. The bear camp has a loud voice too: RBC maintained Underperform with a $90 target — less than 70% below the current price — citing complexity and execution risk, while HSBC downgraded to Hold last week, cutting its target from $205 to $151. DA Davidson trimmed to $165 from $180. The consensus sits at "Hold" with a mean target around $185, roughly 36% above the current $136 close — a wide dispersion that reflects genuine disagreement rather than analyst consensus. The PE of 81x and EV/EBITDA of 59x leave little room for error; both multiples have contracted about 10% over the past 30 days as the stock has worked sideways to slightly higher.
EPS momentum is the strongest bull factor in the data right now. The 30-day and 90-day EPS momentum scores rank in the 90th and 84th percentiles respectively, and the company has a strong track record of beating estimates (78th percentile on EPS surprise). That momentum underpins the analyst bulls. On the other side, the forward-earnings growth score (13th percentile on 12-month forward YoY EPS increase) and EV/EBIT rank (4th percentile) signal that the stock is pricing in a lot of optimism already. RSI at 49 and the short score at 31 — moderate, unchanged over the week — suggest this is not a setup approaching technical extremes in either direction.
On the institutional side, the ownership story is steady rather than dramatic. Vanguard and BlackRock hold roughly 8.9% and 8.0% respectively, both adding marginally last quarter. Peter Thiel trimmed 2 million shares in early April, reducing his stake to 98.3 million shares (4.1%). CEO Alexander Karp, by contrast, added 482,000 shares. The only insider transactions on record belong to independent director Alex Moore, who sold roughly 16,200 shares across April 15 at prices between $136 and $143 — routine in size and low in significance. Net insider activity over 90 days is actually positive: net shares acquired total around 2.7 million, worth roughly $380 million in aggregate, though much of that reflects the broader insider population rather than any single directional bet.
May 4's Q1 print is the most recent earnings reference point: the stock fell 5.7% the day after and was down 5.0% five days later. Next quarter's report is pencilled in for June 3. With options traders positioning for upside and shorts building a larger-than-usual position at the same time, the June print is shaping up as a genuine two-sided event — the gap between the $90 bear target and the $230 bull target will likely narrow only once the revenue acceleration story is tested again.
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