Options traders and short sellers are sending the same signal on EWY, the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF. Three separate data streams converged on Tuesday — and all point the same direction.
The put-call ratio hit 1.90 on May 18. That is nearly three standard deviations above the 20-day mean of 1.00. Options traders are loading puts at a pace not seen for most of the past year. The 52-week PCR high is 2.76, so this reading sits close to the upper end of recent history. The shift has been rapid. Just two weeks ago the PCR sat below 0.82.
The lending market tells the same story. Availability has collapsed to 14.1% — only one share remains available to borrow for every seven already lent out. That is the tightest the borrow market has been since May 12, when availability briefly touched 11.4%. As recently as May 6, availability stood at 104%, meaning the borrow pool was comfortably stocked. Within two weeks, that supply evaporated.
The sharp tightening follows a surge in short demand through early May. Short interest climbed 34% over the past month to a peak of roughly 21.2 million shares on May 8. It has since pulled back 20% in one week, to 22.3% of float. Yet availability remains critically tight. That combination — falling SI alongside a maxed-out borrow market — suggests some shorts are covering while new demand keeps absorbing whatever supply frees up.
Cost to borrow stands at 1.05% APR. That remains low in absolute terms, which reflects the ETF structure's typically deep lending pool. The tightness in availability has not yet translated into a borrow-cost spike.
Several large holders built meaningful new positions as of the most recent filings. Rafferty Asset Management added 3.3 million shares. UBS Asset Management added 5.2 million shares. BNP Paribas added 5.5 million shares. These are sizable accumulations — but in an ETF context, dealer and arbitrage activity often drives institutional holdings, making directionality harder to read.
The ORTEX short score sits at 65.4, roughly flat over the past two weeks. It peaked at 66.5 on May 7-8 — coinciding with the short interest peak — and has eased slightly since.
EWY dropped 8.7% over the past week and is down 1.5% on Monday's close at $176.10. The ETF gained 15.6% over the prior month, so some of that move represented a pullback from an extended run. With availability still near its tightest levels of the year and the options market firmly skewed to puts, the next meaningful data point will be whether availability stays pinched — or whether fresh borrow supply reopens and takes pressure off the lending market.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open EWY on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
