A rare split signal is emerging on BHP. The lending market has been extremely tight for weeks. Yet options traders just turned the most bullish they have been all year.
The lending data tells a stark story. Availability sat below 1% for most of the past month — meaning fewer than one share remained available for every hundred already borrowed. On May 8, availability touched just 0.44%. That is an exceptionally constrained borrow market.
Availability has since eased to 12.4% as of May 15. That is still firmly in "very tight" territory. The 52-week minimum availability hit 0.017% — effectively zero.
Cost to borrow has tracked the tightness. CTB rose 51% over the past week to 2.07%. It climbed 38% over the past month. Short sellers are paying meaningfully more to hold their positions.
Short interest in shares rose 4.1% week-on-week to 16.8 million shares. The trend reversed a month-long decline.
Against that bearish lending backdrop, the put-call ratio dropped to 0.55 on May 18. That is the lowest reading in 52 weeks. The 20-day average stood at 0.72. The single-day move produced a z-score of –3.06 — a statistically extreme shift toward calls.
The 52-week high for the PCR was 1.11. The move from peak bearishness to peak bullishness in the options market has been sharp and sudden.
The convergence here is unusual. A tight borrow market normally signals that short sellers are entrenched and conviction is high. Yet option flow suggests traders are positioning for upside. Two distinct investor pools are making opposite bets simultaneously.
BHP's ORTEX short score stands at 53.5 — moderate, not extreme. The dividend score ranks at the 92nd percentile, supporting the bull case on yield grounds. Forward EPS growth ranks in the 99th percentile year-on-year, though near-term EPS momentum is softer (30d rank: 34).
Next earnings are not until August 17.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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