BA heads into late May with the mood noticeably cooler than it was a week ago — down 9.2% on the week to $215.01, reversing most of the rally that call buyers were pressing hard just days ago.
The sharpest reversal is in options. The put/call ratio has swung from near-record lows to 0.74, now more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.86 — sitting right at the 52-week floor of 0.73. That sounds bullish on the surface, but it reflects the tail end of a call-heavy positioning unwind rather than fresh conviction. Traders who were aggressively buying upside a week ago have not yet rotated into defensive puts; they have simply stepped back. The options market is no longer pressing the rally — it has gone quiet.
Short interest tells a more complicated story. It has climbed 6.3% over the week to 2.17% of free float — up roughly 21% over the past month from around 1.79%. That confirms the rebuild flagged in last week's note is still in progress. But the absolute level remains modest. Borrow costs are negligible at 0.44%, and availability is extraordinarily wide at over 3,100% — more than 355 million shares available to lend against roughly 16.5 million currently borrowed. There is no squeeze pressure here. Shorts are building slowly and cheaply, with ample room to add.
The Street's direction of travel remains constructive, even as the week's price action stings. Citigroup raised its target to $260 on May 18, maintaining a Buy. Most recent activity in the analyst community has been upgrades or target lifts — Morgan Stanley moved its target to $250, Wells Fargo initiated at Overweight with a $250 target in early April. The consensus mean sits at $270, implying roughly 25% upside from current levels. That gap gives the bull case some arithmetic support: the bull thesis rests on commercial travel demand recovery and a defence spending tailwind, while bears point to high leverage, persistent margin pressure, and a commercial backlog that may not translate cleanly to free cash flow. EPS momentum scores rank at the 93rd percentile over 30 days and 89th over 90 days, which is striking given the negative forward earnings trajectory flagged in the stock score note — those momentum scores likely reflect estimate stabilisation rather than acceleration. The analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 91st percentile, underscoring how skewed the formal coverage remains toward positive ratings.
Institutional positioning shows large passive and active holders adding modestly. BlackRock added over 4.2 million shares and FMR (Fidelity) added 3.7 million in the most recent reported period through April 30. Vanguard added a more modest 365,000 shares. The insider picture is less fresh — the most recent trades in the data are from early March, when independent director Tim Buckley bought ~$500K worth of stock at $224, offset by a cluster of executive sells in February including CEO Robert Ortberg, who sold roughly $1.2 million at $236. That February sell cluster came near the post-rally highs and is now well above current prices, which gives it some interpretive weight in retrospect.
The last earnings print — April 22 Q1 results — produced a +6.8% one-day move and a +2.3% five-day move, suggesting the market rewarded what it saw. The next event is July 29. Between now and then, the key watch points are whether short interest continues its measured rebuild toward more meaningful levels, and whether the options market's call-heavy lean re-emerges as the stock stabilises — or whether the post-China-visit optimism continues to deflate and puts begin to fill the vacuum.
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