E (Eni S.p.A.) is sending contradictory signals. The cost to borrow its ADR has rocketed from roughly 1% to over 18% in days. Yet options traders are the most bullish they've been in two weeks.
The CTB spike is the dominant story here. For most of April and into mid-May, cost to borrow sat quietly between 0.96% and 2.44%. Then, on May 19, it jumped to 19.57%. It pulled back slightly to 18.29% on May 20 — still up more than 1,500% week-on-week.
That is not a routine fluctuation. It signals a sudden surge in demand for borrows against a constrained supply.
Availability supports this reading. On May 14, availability stood at just 20.7% — meaning for every five shares already borrowed, only one remained available to lend. It has since eased back to 80.3% as of May 20, suggesting the acute squeeze may be passing. But the CTB remains at historically elevated levels.
The ORTEX short score jumped from 47.4 to 58.6 between May 12 and May 19 — its sharpest move in the tracked window. That reflects the combined pressure of rising short interest, tightening availability, and elevated borrow costs.
Here is the contradiction. While the lending market tightened dramatically, options traders leaned bullish. The put/call ratio fell to 0.80 on May 20, sitting 2.1 standard deviations below its 20-day mean of 0.92.
That PCR level is the lowest in two weeks. Relative to the 52-week range of 0.03–1.13, it sits comfortably in bullish territory. Call buyers are outpacing put buyers even as short sellers scramble for borrows.
Short interest climbed 10.1% over the past week to 1.66 million shares. The one-month change is 14.5%. These are meaningful moves in absolute terms, but the total share count is modest relative to Eni's overall float. The SI story here is secondary to the borrow cost dynamics.
JP Morgan upgraded E from Underweight to Overweight in March. RBC Capital raised its price target to $28 from $24 in April. Both moves came after a Q1 earnings beat that also prompted an upgrade to full-year guidance. The 90-day EPS momentum factor ranks at the 80th percentile. The 12-month forward EPS year-on-year increase factor sits at the 99th percentile — the sharpest forward revision cycle in Eni's recent history.
The next earnings event is July 29. The key question is whether the CTB spike was a short-lived dislocation — availability is already recovering — or whether borrow demand will rebuild ahead of that date. A PCR staying below 0.85 alongside continued CTB elevation would be an unusual and telling combination.
Data summary
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