Short sellers grew bolder this week across several mid-cap names, with ORTEX data pointing to notable positioning changes even as analyst rating tools faced a brief outage.
Wolfspeed stands out as the most extreme case. Short interest hit 98.2% of free float. That rose nearly 5 percentage points in just seven days. Availability fell to zero — meaning there are no more shares left to borrow. The silicon carbide chipmaker has faced heavy pressure amid factory ramp costs and weakening EV demand.
Robert Half saw short interest climb to 29.1% of free float. That is a near-3 percentage point rise week-on-week. The staffing firm has struggled as white-collar hiring stays soft. Bears appear unconvinced a recovery is near.
Columbia Sportswear also drew fresh shorts. SI hit 16% of free float, up 3.6 points in a week. Tariff concerns and slowing consumer spending have weighed on the apparel sector broadly.
Wix.com rounded out the most-shorted risers. SI reached 30.4% of free float. That puts the web platform builder firmly on short sellers' radar despite solid revenue growth in recent quarters.
The macro backdrop — sticky inflation and slowing growth — is giving bears reasons to stay active in rate-sensitive and consumer-facing names.
This is not financial advice.
ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
