Antelope Enterprise Holdings Limited has produced one of the most violent stock moves of the year, and the borrow market tells you exactly why the trade is so charged right now.
The stock has tripled in a month — up nearly 297% — but gave back a sharp 20% on Friday alone after peaking. That round-trip is the whole story: a micro-cap that was virtually unshorted a fortnight ago now has bears crowding in, and the cost of carrying that bet has soared to extraordinary levels.
The clearest signal is in the lending market. Borrowing AEHL costs 791% annualised — up 231% in a single week — making it among the most expensive borrows on Nasdaq right now. Availability has collapsed to effectively zero: every share in the lending pool is currently out on loan, the tightest the borrow market has been all year. With availability at 0% and the ORTEX short score running at 79, the lending setup is extreme by any measure.
Short interest itself confirms the sprint. Shorts held near zero through all of April and into early May — fewer than 20,000 shares short as recently as April 30. Then, in a matter of days from May 8 onward, positions jumped to roughly 1.87 million shares by May 14, a near-1,700% surge in one month. The ORTEX days-to-cover rank sits in the 97th percentile, meaning this stock is deeply illiquid relative to typical daily volume. Short sellers who piled in this week are now sitting on a very expensive, very thin book.
The earnings history adds context to the two-way risk. The May 4 print left the stock essentially flat on the day but then sent it up 182% over the following five sessions — that was the ignition event for this week's rally. Prior releases have been unkind: the March 24 result triggered a 13% single-day drop followed by a 28% five-day decline, and the January print saw a 16% one-day fall. The pattern is binary and volatile in both directions.
Institutional ownership offers little anchoring comfort. The largest disclosed holder, Atlas Sciences, controls just 0.34% of shares, and the next several holders are individuals with sub-0.25% stakes each. With a market cap of roughly $53 million and this level of float fragmentation, even modest order flow can move the stock dramatically — which is precisely what the past month has demonstrated.
The setup heading into next week is a compressed, expensive borrow with zero availability, a short base built entirely in the last week, and a stock that has already started retracing from its highs. Watch whether the cost to borrow continues to accelerate — any further tightening from an already-exhausted pool would signal that new short demand is arriving even as existing bears are trapped in a costly position.
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