Palantir Technologies heads into its June 3 earnings date with the short-building trend of the past month showing its first clear signs of fatigue — while options traders have made their most bullish shift in weeks.
The short-build story that dominated the previous two notes has quietly reversed. SI % FF has pulled back to 2.62%, down from the 2.73% peak flagged last week, with share count falling roughly 2.3 million over five days. That said, the month-on-month picture still shows a 16% increase — so shorts have not abandoned the thesis, they have merely paused. Importantly, the borrow market remains completely frictionless. Availability is extraordinarily loose at 7,581%, meaning there are over 75 shares available to borrow for every one currently lent out. Cost to borrow has crept up 25% on the week to 0.52%, but in absolute terms that remains trivially cheap. There is no structural pressure forcing covers.
Options tell a more interesting story this week. Positioning has rotated to its most bullish reading in recent months. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.99, nearly 1.4 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 1.04 — the first sub-1.00 reading in the observable window, and well off the 52-week high of 1.16 that marked peak defensiveness earlier in the cycle. This is a notable shift from the neutral-to-cautious positioning described last week. With earnings six days out, the options market is now skewing call-heavy rather than hedge-heavy.
Analyst activity since the May 4 print has been broadly constructive, though not uniform. Citigroup lifted its target to $225 this month while reiterating Buy. Rosenblatt reiterated its $225 Buy just last week. Wedbush held at $230 Outperform. Argus Research upgraded from Hold to Buy with a $190 target. Against that, RBC held its Underperform at $90, and DA Davidson trimmed its Neutral target from $180 to $165 — a reminder that the bear case on valuation persists. The stock trades at a PE of roughly 80x and an EV/EBITDA near 58x, both down materially over the month (PE compressed by about 15 turns in 30 days), which reflects the 6% pullback from a month ago to the current $136.88. Factor scores are supportive on EPS momentum — ranking in the 91st percentile on 30-day EPS momentum and the 86th on 90-day — but the forward EPS growth rank of just 13 highlights why valuation sceptics have ammunition.
Insider activity adds a cautionary data point. CFO David Glazer sold shares worth approximately $1.57 million on May 20, while CTO Shyam Sankar sold nearly $2.9 million across multiple tranches the same day. The Chief Legal Officer also sold on May 20. These are routine plan-driven disposals at low significance scores, and the 90-day net insider position is actually positive at roughly 922,000 shares — but the cluster of C-suite sales at prices just below current levels is worth noting as a framing detail rather than a directional signal.
Among correlated peers, PLTR's 2.2% weekly gain looks measured. ZETA rose 9.3% on the week and AMPL gained 10.6%, while closest peer APP fell 3.9%. The divergence suggests PLTR is neither leading nor lagging the software cohort — it is consolidating at $136-137 with the June 3 print as the next meaningful test. The last earnings event produced a 5.7% single-day drop and a 5.0% five-day decline, so the question heading into next week is whether the newly bullish options positioning prices in a better outcome, or simply reflects premiums being sold into a high-IV event.
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