Nearly half of JETS float remains short — yet the lending market is flashing contradictory signals. Short interest dropped sharply in a week. Availability stayed extremely tight. Cost to borrow jumped. All three moved at once.
Short interest in JETS fell 22.7% over the past week to 46.9% of float. That is still an extraordinarily high level for any instrument. But the speed of the decline tells a story: bears covered aggressively between May 8 and May 12, when short shares dropped from roughly 16.6 million to 12.6 million.
Despite that covering, the borrow market did not loosen. Availability sits at just 26.5% — meaning roughly one share remains borrowable for every three already out on loan. That is firmly in "very tight" territory. The cost to borrow rose 58% in a single week to 7.62% APR.
The divergence is notable. Fewer shorts exist, yet borrowing is harder and more expensive than it was a week ago. New shorts entering the trade are paying more for a diminishing pool of lendable shares.
Availability touched a 52-week low of just 0.01% earlier this year. Today it sits at 26.5% — tight, but not at that extreme. What changed is utilization: it hit 96%, the highest reading in 52 weeks.
That figure captures how much of the available lending pool is actively deployed. At 96%, almost every share in the pool is out on loan. The practical effect is higher borrow costs and reduced flexibility for short sellers who want to add or maintain positions.
The ORTEX short score stands at 72.6 — elevated, consistent with the broader lending pressure signals.
Put/call ratio on JETS came in at 2.87 on May 19. That sounds bearish. But context matters: the 20-day average PCR is 3.33, and the current reading sits nearly two standard deviations below that mean (z-score: -1.92).
Relative to recent history, options positioning has actually shifted less bearish. Whether that reflects short covering flowing through to options desks, or new call buying, the options market is not reinforcing the lending-market pessimism right now.
The key tension to watch: short interest is falling but the borrow market is tightening. That combination means the remaining shorts are paying more to hold their positions — pressure that tends to resolve in one direction or the other.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open JETS 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.
