Three signals converged on Blackstone overnight. The short base — which two previous notes described as shrinking — has now reversed sharply in a single session.
Short interest jumped 15.3% in one day to 2.36% of free float. That follows a week-on-week rise of 13.6%. The previous two notes on BX documented a sustained unwind — SI had fallen from ~3.1% of float in late April to roughly 2.0% by mid-May. That trend has now broken. The one-day spike of ~2.35 million shares is the sharpest single-session move in recent weeks and brings SI back to levels last seen earlier this month.
This is a meaningful change versus the prior narrative. Bears had not returned through the price weakness of April and May. Now they have.
The borrow market remains loose. Availability sits at 2,617% — meaning there are more than 26 shares available to lend for every share currently borrowed. That is well inside "normal" territory and imposes no mechanical constraint on further short building.
Cost to borrow peaked at 0.57% last Monday before falling back to 0.36% by Tuesday. The intraweek spike was the sharpest five-week move in CTB, suggesting brief demand pressure that has partially eased. At current levels, CTB remains near its lowest point in the past month. Shorting BX is still cheap.
The put/call ratio sits at 1.47, sitting 1.4 standard deviations below its 20-day mean of 1.52. That implies options positioning has actually shifted toward calls in recent sessions — less put protection being added, not more. The 52-week PCR range runs from 1.18 to 1.87, so today's reading is in the lower half of the range. Options traders are not, at this moment, the ones driving the bearish signal.
Analysts remain broadly constructive but have trimmed targets following April's earnings. The mean price target stands at $143.65, implying roughly 22% upside from the current $118. TD Cowen's Bill Katz lowered his target from $140 to $133 on May 18, maintaining Buy. JP Morgan's Kenneth Worthington cut to $136 from $142 on April 24, keeping Neutral. Morgan Stanley dropped their target most aggressively — from $215 to $184 — though retaining Overweight. Oppenheimer bucked the trend with an upgrade to Outperform on April 13.
The factor score for analyst recommendation differential stands at the 94th percentile — a wide gap between where analysts sit and current market pricing.
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