Interactive Brokers Group has spent the past week rebuilding after its post-earnings slide, closing at $82.89 on Tuesday — up 1.9% on the day, though still down fractionally on the week and sitting just below the Street's mean price target of $86.
The short-selling picture has softened meaningfully. Short interest edged down nearly 3% over the week to 2.36% of the free float — a low absolute level that carries little squeeze risk. Borrow conditions are consistent with that: cost to borrow jumped 37% over the week to 0.44%, but in absolute terms that remains negligible. The real story in the lending market is availability, which is extraordinarily loose at roughly 8,989% of outstanding short interest — meaning there are nearly 90 shares available to borrow for every one currently lent out, compared to the 52-week minimum availability of around 984%. The lending market is about as open as it gets. Options positioning is similarly relaxed. The put/call ratio has actually drifted slightly below its 20-day average at 0.61, marginally call-skewed, with a z-score of -0.73. Taken together, neither shorts nor options traders are making a directional bet of consequence here.
The Street remains firmly positive, and the post-earnings target-raise cycle documented last week holds. Goldman Sachs ($98), BMO Capital ($93), and Barclays ($93) all lifted targets in late April after Q1 results; the consensus mean of $86 is above the current price. The valuation, however, continues to attract scrutiny. The trailing P/E is 31.4 and the price-to-book has climbed to 1.92 — up sharply over the past 30 days, though still below where it was before the April sell-off. The bull case leans on the structural revenue story: record client assets above $400 billion, a gross margin near 93%, and return on equity at 22.4% last quarter. The bear case is simply that those numbers are already priced, leaving little margin for error at the next print.
Insider activity provides a mixed read. Independent Director Lawrence Harris sold $2 million of stock on April 28 — the only material trade in the 90-day window aside from director Lori Conkling's recurring small-lot purchases totalling a few thousand dollars. The net 90-day insider position is a modest $2 million of net buying, largely a statistical artefact of those tiny purchase lots. The founder's position — Thomas Peterffy holds roughly 1.36% of shares through this listing — has been static. Among institutional holders, BlackRock holds just over 7% and barely moved its position in the latest reporting period, while Cantillon trimmed by 1.5 million shares. There is no institutional flow of note changing the thesis.
The prior earnings print warrants a glance given Q2 results are scheduled for July 14. The Q1 release on April 21 triggered a 3.9% one-day decline that extended to a 4.6% loss over the following five days — the directional pattern that preceded the current discount-to-target setup. The stock has now recovered most of that ground. At roughly 2% below the Street consensus, the gap between analyst optimism and market price has compressed considerably from where it was a week ago, making the July 14 print the next obvious fulcrum: the debate will centre less on whether growth rates are strong and more on whether management can sustain commission and net interest income at a level that justifies the current multiple as rate-environment tailwinds shift.
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