NKE has found its footing this week, with the stock up 6% to $44.94 and options traders rotating toward the most bullish positioning of the past year.
The clearest shift this week is in options sentiment. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.72, more than a standard deviation below its 20-day average of 0.74, and now approaching the 52-week low of 0.62. That is a marked reversal from the defensive skew visible through late April and early May, when the PCR was consistently running above 0.75. The rotation toward calls suggests traders are no longer bracing for downside into the June 25 print — they are leaning into it.
The lending market tells a consistent story of orderly, not panicked, repositioning. Short interest has been cut nearly 12% over the past month — from around 55–58 million shares in mid-April to 49.2 million now — bringing SI as a percentage of free float to 4.1%. That is meaningful but not extreme. Availability remains deep in normal territory at roughly 993% of outstanding short interest, meaning there is no shortage of shares to borrow and no structural squeeze pressure building. The cost to borrow has edged up about 9% over the week to 0.44%, still a low absolute level by any measure. The ORTEX short score of 38.2 is little changed from last week and sits in the bottom 40th percentile of the market — not a heavily-contested short by current standards. The weight of evidence here is that shorts have been reducing exposure into the price recovery rather than pressing new bets.
The Street has had a brutal run with this name. Goldman Sachs downgraded to Neutral in early April, as did JP Morgan. Wells Fargo followed with a downgrade to Equal-Weight on May 8, cutting its target to $45 — almost exactly where the stock is trading now. The consensus is 14 buys against 20 holds, with a mean target of $60.78. That gap between target and current price implies substantial return potential on paper, but the recent direction of analyst activity has been uniformly negative — multiple target cuts across April and May with no offsetting upgrades visible in the recent data. Valuation multiples are not demanding by historical standards, with a P/E around 27.6 and EV/EBITDA near 18.5, both roughly flat over the past month. The factor profile adds nuance: the dividend score ranks in the 97th percentile, EPS surprise in the 79th, but EPS momentum over 90 days is soft at the 34th percentile — consistent with a company where the analyst community sees recovery but not yet acceleration.
The insider buying that was the standout angle two weeks ago remains firmly on the ledger. CEO Elliott Hill bought ~$1 million of stock at $42.27 on April 13, and Lead Independent Director Tim Cook spent $1.06 million at $42.43 on April 10. Net insider purchases over 90 days total roughly $3.6 million, with no significant offsetting sales since February. The stock has now moved about 6% above those purchase prices. That insider cluster has not been unwound, and the shares purchased then are currently in the money.
The prior earnings reaction is the most direct frame for June 25. The March 31 quarterly print drove a 12.9% one-day decline followed by a 16.7% five-day fall — the kind of reaction that argues for options positioning to be cautious. The current shift toward calls therefore represents a genuine change in market view, not a continuation of the prior defensive posture. Among peers, WWW and UAA both gained over 12% this week, COLM added 11%, and ONON rose nearly 6% — the whole group is being lifted by the same macro tailwinds, making it harder to read NKE's 6% move as company-specific.
What to watch heading into June 25: whether the put/call ratio continues drifting toward its 52-week low, or snaps back toward the 0.76–0.78 zone that dominated through most of April — the direction of that reversion will say more about how traders are reading the earnings setup than any single data point between now and the release.
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