Power REIT heads into the back half of May with one clear narrative: a stock under sustained price pressure, while the short sellers who arguably helped drive that pressure have been quietly cutting positions.
Short interest tells a story of rapid unwinding rather than escalating aggression. Estimated short shares fell by more than half over the past week — down roughly 58% — to around 29,900. The ORTEX short score has dropped from 45.9 on May 6 to 37.1 this week, pulling it back toward the middle of its range. At a market cap of just $2.2 million and with float-adjusted short interest just above 1% of the free float, this is not a crowded short by any conventional measure. The borrow market confirms as much: availability is extremely loose at over 1,000% of estimated short interest, meaning there are far more shares available to lend than there are shorts demanding them.
Cost to borrow is a mild counterpoint to that looseness. At 15.2% annualised, borrowing costs have risen about 17% over the past week and 12% over the past month. The rate briefly spiked to near 20% on May 8 before easing. For a stock priced below $0.60, even a 15% annualised borrow rate carries a real-money cost on a per-share basis, though the absolute dollar amounts on a $2.2 million float are tiny. The modest borrow-cost elevation likely reflects micro-cap liquidity friction rather than any meaningful squeeze dynamic.
The price chart is the most uncomfortable element. PW closed at $0.59 on May 15, down nearly 7% on the week and 29% over the past month. The most recent earnings print, filed in March 2026, produced just a 3.9% one-day gain — a muted reaction compared to the double-digit moves the stock generated on its August and October 2025 announcements, when it rallied 15% and 34% respectively over the following five sessions. Those post-earnings pops have not sustained. Analyst coverage is effectively absent: the only published targets date to 2021–2022 and carry prices an order of magnitude above the current level, rendering them uninformative for current positioning.
Ownership is heavily concentrated. The two largest reported holders — David Lesser and Henry Posner — together account for roughly 23% of shares, with no reported change in their positions. Institutional presence beyond those names is minimal: Vanguard, BlackRock, and Renaissance hold token positions. Renaissance trimmed by 5,300 shares in its last reported filing, the only notable institutional movement in recent data. With such thin institutional sponsorship and no active analyst coverage, the stock trades largely on its own fundamental momentum — and that momentum has been negative.
The next data point worth watching is whether short interest stabilises at its new, much lower level or continues to drift further toward zero. A stock trading at $0.59 with a $2.2 million market cap, no dividend, stale analyst coverage, and loose borrow availability is one where the short case has been largely abandoned — what the price does next is a question of fundamental investor appetite alone.
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