AMM — Almaden Minerals — has caught a bid. The stock is up 21% over the past month and 8.5% on the week, closing at CAD $0.255. That move stands in sharp contrast to correlated TSXV peers, most of which have pulled back. BIG fell 9.4% on the week, CAPT dropped 11.2%, and SIG lost 7.2%. Almaden's resilience in that company is the week's most notable signal.
The short-side story is small but worth understanding clearly. Estimated short shares climbed from roughly 72 to around 10,800 between April 20 and April 22 — effectively a data reclassification or new position being counted rather than a genuine 15,000% increase in bearish intent. In absolute terms, the short position is tiny; there is no meaningful float percentage to quote given the current data. The ORTEX short score is 25.7, a low reading, confirming that active shorting pressure on Almaden is negligible. The factor-based short-score rank, however, sits in the 93rd percentile — a structural flag driven by micro-cap liquidity and sector positioning rather than any acute crowding.
The lending market is loose. Cost to borrow has eased sharply this week, falling almost 47% to 1.94% after running as high as 4.6% in late April. Utilization is negligible at 0.42%, far below the 52-week peak of 12.5%. This means the borrow market is wide open — no squeeze mechanics are in play. Availability is not a constraint at current positioning levels.
Institutional ownership is thin and heavily concentrated in founders. James Poliquin, the chairman, holds 2.52% of shares. CEO Morgan Poliquin holds 1.22%. Konwave AG, a specialist gold fund, holds 1.93% as of mid-2025. Together, those three names account for roughly 5.7% of shares. The last reported insider trade of any substance was a small director buy of 45,000 shares in June 2025 at CAD $0.226 — well below the current price and now almost a year stale. There has been no material insider activity since.
Earnings are the nearest catalyst. Almaden has its next reporting event scheduled for May 11. The recent track record on these prints is consistently negative: the stock fell 6.1% the day after the March 19 release and lost 10.2% over the following five days. The November 2025 print was worse — an 11.6% one-day drop and the same loss held over five days. The April 8 event showed no price movement, but that appears to have been a filing rather than a substantive earnings release. The pattern across the genuinely comparable events is a consistent post-result drawdown.
With a May 11 event approaching, the question worth watching is whether the month's rally has run ahead of what the next disclosure can support — and whether TSXV peers, which have broadly retreated this week while AMM held firm, start to reassert the gravitational pull they usually exercise.
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