Short sellers piled into VOOG this week at a pace rarely seen in an S&P 500 Growth ETF. The move is striking. It happened even as borrowing costs stayed near floor levels.
Short interest in VOOG has risen 1,837% over the past month. That is not a typo. Shares short climbed from around 133,000 in mid-April to 2.57 million by May 20.
The week-on-week moves have been violent. SI jumped 278% in one week to 7.4% of float, then pulled back. It now sits at 5.3% of float. That is still a dramatic change from the near-zero readings in early April.
To be clear: 5.3% is not an extreme absolute level. But the velocity of the build is what stands out here.
What makes this unusual is that cost to borrow fell as shorts built. CTB stands at 0.32% — down 35% week-on-week and near its 12-month low.
Availability backs this up. At 302%, there are roughly three shares available in the lending pool for every one already borrowed. That is a comfortable, well-supplied market. Lenders are not squeezing anyone.
This combination — aggressive short building alongside cheap, abundant borrow — points toward deliberate hedging rather than a borrow-constrained squeeze setup. Someone is paying to get short. They just are not paying much.
The put-call ratio hit 0.3392 on May 20. That is 2.29 standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.312. Put buying relative to calls has climbed noticeably in the last week.
The 52-week PCR high is 0.39, so the current level is elevated but not at an extreme. It does, however, corroborate the directional lean from the SI data. Options traders and short sellers are pulling in the same direction.
The top holder as of March 31 was JPMorgan Chase with 12.98 million shares — 13.8% of the float. Morgan Stanley added 250,500 shares in Q1. Raymond James added 339,606. Two Sigma entered as a new holder with 1.38 million shares.
That institutional accumulation on the long side sits in contrast to the recent short build. It sets up a tension worth watching.
What to watch: Whether the SI build continues above 7% of float — the intra-week peak — or whether this week's partial unwind (shares short fell 21% on May 20 alone) signals the hedging activity has run its course.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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