ADE Shorts Collapse as Stock Slides

Adex Mining Inc. heads into May with its short position in near-freefall — a sharp reversal that sits oddly against a stock down 28% in a month.

The dominant fact this week is the collapse in estimated short interest. Reported shares short dropped roughly 87% over the past week, from around 148,000 to fewer than 20,000 shares. The one-month decline is similar in magnitude — down about 85%. That is an unusually dramatic unwind for a micro-cap miner. In absolute terms, the numbers remain tiny: short interest works out to approximately 0.02% of free float based on the company's 677 million shares outstanding, with Great Harvest Canadian Investment Company holding more than 81% of those shares. There is almost no meaningful short position left to speak of.

Availability in the lending market is loose, and borrow pressure is essentially absent. The 52-week peak utilization ran as high as 99% earlier — the market was nearly fully tapped — but today the reading is just 11.6%, meaning the vast majority of shares available to borrow are sitting idle. Cost to borrow data is stale (last recorded 31 March at 5.3%), so current borrow conditions cannot be confirmed with precision. The ORTEX short score sits at 32, comfortably below the midpoint, consistent with a stock where active short pressure has essentially evaporated.

The price picture tells a different story. ADE closed at C$0.13 on 28 April, off 7% on the day and down 28% over the past month. The stock is flat on the week — but that flat weekly reading follows a sharp leg lower in the prior weeks. For context, close TSXV peers have also had a rough run: KG fell 4% on the day and AE dropped another 4.4%, while RYO and MOX shed similar ground. This looks like broad sector weakness rather than anything idiosyncratic to Adex.

The ownership structure makes this a peculiar name to trade. Great Harvest controls over 81% of shares outstanding, leaving a free float of roughly 122 million shares — and the institutional data is close to a year old, so the current state of minority positioning is unclear. Insider trade records are more than a decade stale and carry no weight in this analysis.

Earnings history introduces real volatility risk. The last three events produced a 22% gain, a 29% loss, and a 17% loss on the following day — swings that are dramatic even by junior miner standards. The next scheduled event falls on 1 May, just days away, making the near-term setup particularly charged. What to watch: whether the abrupt short cover ahead of results signals relief or simply thin-market noise — and whether the stock's month-long slide accelerates or stabilises on the back of whatever Adex reports.