Altex Industries is an OTC-traded oil and gas micro-cap where the most striking data point this week is what isn't there — short sellers have essentially walked away.
Short interest is negligible by any measure. The latest ORTEX estimate puts shares short at just 191, representing roughly 0.002% of the free float — a level so thin it is effectively zero. That reading comes from February 20 and is now stale by more than two months, which itself reflects how little activity there is to track. The prior data points from early 2025 showed around 4,300 shares short, also a rounding error for a company of this size. There is nothing in the borrow market to suggest bearish conviction. The lending pool shows zero shares on loan and availability has been fully open throughout the past year, meaning the borrow market is completely uncongested. Cost to borrow, last recorded at 0.48%, is near its multi-year low.
The stock itself has been quietly drifting. It closed at $0.2424 on April 28, down about 2.5% on the day but up roughly 5.4% on the week. The one-month change is essentially flat. With no earnings event on the calendar and no analyst coverage visible in the data, price movement here is likely driven by thin volume rather than fundamental re-rating. The most recent earnings history shows a mixed pattern: the January 2026 announcement produced a 2.8% gain on the day but the stock gave it back over the following five sessions, falling 6.6%. An earlier event in late 2025 posted a flat day-one reaction before rising nearly 19% over five days — though the subsequent December event reversed that with a 10% five-day decline.
Ownership is highly concentrated. A single holder, Steven Cardin, held 64.7% of shares as of late November 2025 — a level of concentration that limits float and can amplify price moves in either direction on any meaningful volume change. With just one institutional holder on record, the stock trades more like a closely held private entity than a liquid OTC security.
The factor scores present a mild curiosity: the short score ranks in the 98th percentile, meaning this name looks more squeezable than nearly all peers on paper. In practice, with a free-float short interest of less than 0.01%, there is nothing to squeeze. The high rank likely reflects the combination of near-zero shares on loan and fully open borrow — statistical inputs that score well on short-squeeze frameworks but carry no real signal here given the trivial absolute short position.
The next meaningful data point to watch is any updated short interest filing that brings the stale February reading current, or any shift in ownership concentration that might change the float dynamics.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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