TDIC entered the week as the most kinetic name in micro-cap entertainment. The stock doubled — up 127% in a single session on May 12 — then triggered a circuit-breaker halt on May 13 when it extended gains to more than 280% above the prior close.
The borrow market tells the more remarkable story this week. Cost to borrow exploded to 354% annualised by May 12, nearly triple the 119% reading from May 4 and almost ten times the ~33–46% range that persisted through most of April. That is an extraordinary compression of lending economics for a stock trading at $2.36 with a market cap below $30 million. At the same time, availability collapsed to just 9.4% of short interest — meaning fewer than one share is available to borrow for every ten already lent out. That is well inside the "very tight" threshold and reflects near-exhaustion of the lending pool. Estimated short shares rebuilt sharply to roughly 254,000 on May 12 after an anomalous drop to zero on May 11, a 166% week-on-week jump that pushed the ORTEX short score to 61.2 — up from 45 at the start of the week. Days to cover ranks in the 99th percentile across the universe, a reflection of how thin the float is relative to short positioning.
What makes the borrow squeeze more charged is that short interest had been cycling dramatically throughout April and early May. Shares short peaked near 831,000 on April 23, collapsed to just 30,000 by May 8, hit zero on May 11, then rebounded sharply. That kind of oscillation — combined with a RSI-14 running at 77 — points to a float so small that incremental positioning moves register as large percentage swings. The 52-week utilization high is 100%; by May 12 the lending pool was back to 92.5% utilised, the highest reading since April 23 when the first squeeze cycle peaked. Through that entire April episode, cost to borrow sat in a much lower range of 40–110%. The current 354% reads as a material step-change in borrow stress.
Institutional ownership provides useful context. A single holder, Wai Yue Seto, held 16% of shares as of August 2025 and has not changed that position. Beyond that, the disclosed holders are small-volume quantitative and market-making firms — Jane Street, Two Sigma, XTX — whose reported positions are measured in thousands of shares. Genuine institutional sponsorship is essentially absent. That concentrated ownership structure amplifies price volatility when borrow demand spikes, since the tradeable float is thin and institutional demand for stock is low.
On the one prior earnings print in the dataset — the January 29 report — TDIC moved +12% on the day and then fell 18% over the subsequent five sessions. The next confirmed earnings event is scheduled for August 6. The stock's YTD gain had been only 12% before this week's move, meaning the bulk of the 257% one-month surge is entirely a function of the squeeze dynamic rather than any fundamental re-rating.
The spread between the intensity of the borrow stress and the thinness of fundamental coverage is the core tension to track: with availability near exhaustion, any further pressure on shorts requires finding new supply in a pool that has very little left.
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