Rivian has lost another leg lower this week, and the bears who rebuilt positions through early May are now pressing their advantage — but the options market is sending a very different message.
Short interest has continued its slow grind upward. At 12.2% of the free float, the headline SI figure looks lower than the 18.5% cited in last week's note — that gap reflects the data snapshot in hand, but the directional story is consistent: shorts added again this week, up roughly 1.7% over the past five sessions. The stock fell 7.5% on the week to $12.90, down 25% over the past month, so those positions are generating meaningful returns. Days-to-cover from the most recent FINRA filing came in at 6.0, a fairly high reading that underlines just how concentrated the bearish book has become relative to normal trading volume.
The lending market is not tightening to match. Availability is running at around 112% — meaning there are more shares still available to borrow than are currently lent out — and borrow costs have actually eased this week, falling 8% to 0.45% APR. That is as cheap as borrow gets. The ORTEX short score has edged up to 71.4, close to a recent high, but the wide-open lending conditions mean new shorts can still enter without paying a premium. There is no squeeze pressure visible in the infrastructure of this trade.
Options positioning is moving in the opposite direction to the shorts. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.84, more than 1.3 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.91 — the least defensively positioned the options market has been in months. Back in late April, the PCR was running above 1.0, reflecting genuine hedging demand around the Q1 earnings print. That anxiety has faded sharply. Bulls are now outweighing bears in the options market even as short sellers add stock. The setup is a genuine divergence: systematic shorts are leaning harder on the name while options traders are backing away from downside protection.
The Street is split, but tilted bullish on paper. The mean analyst price target is $18.15, implying roughly 41% upside from current levels, and several firms reiterated Buy ratings after the May 1 earnings release. BNP Paribas trimmed its target modestly to $22 while keeping Outperform; DA Davidson raised its target to $15 just last week while staying Neutral. Most bulls anchor the thesis on Rivian's $5.4B liquidity runway, the Volkswagen partnership, and delivery trajectory. Bears point to persistent losses — the P/E and earnings yield are both deeply negative — and a highly competitive EV landscape where Tesla fell nearly 7% itself this week. The price-to-book multiple has compressed 40% over the past 30 days, now at 5.2x, reflecting how quickly the valuation cushion has eroded with the stock's slide.
Institutional ownership tells a more structural story. Porsche SE added over 62 million shares in the most recent filing, making it the largest institutional holder at 16.4%. Amazon holds 12.4% and has been static. Renaissance Technologies trimmed by 5.5 million shares last quarter — a meaningful reduction from a quant shop that tends to trade on shorter-horizon signals. On the insider side, CEO Robert Scaringe and CFO Claire McDonough both sold shares last week, though the transactions followed equity awards granted the same day and carry low significance scores.
The next earnings date is June 22. The last print on April 30 sent the stock down 6.5% the following day and nearly 12% over the following five sessions — the most punishing earnings reaction in the recent history. With short interest elevated and the lending pool still accommodating, the setup into that date is the key thing to track.
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