Three distinct signals converged on BBD this week. Short interest exploded, options traders turned notably bullish, and the borrow market remained wide open. The combination tells an unusual story.
Estimated short interest in Banco Bradesco hit 62.5 million shares as of May 27. That's up 192% in one week and nearly 5x versus a month ago.
The move is almost entirely concentrated in a single session. On May 27 alone, short interest rose 188%. Prior to that spike, shares short had been running at a steady ~21 million since mid-May.
The float-share percentage is not calculable from available data, but the raw share count shift is dramatic regardless. What makes the picture stranger: the borrow market shows no stress whatsoever.
Availability sits at 9,999% — the practical ceiling, indicating roughly 5.3 billion shares remain available to lend against the ~62 million currently borrowed. That is an extraordinarily loose lending market.
Cost to borrow is 0.38% per annum. For context, it peaked above 1.7% in early May. The 30-day trend is down 21%. Shorts are paying almost nothing to maintain their positions.
This matters because it means the short-interest spike is not a forced or speculative squeeze-trade. Borrowing is trivially cheap. The demand for shorts appears deliberate and unhurried — not a scramble.
Simultaneously, the put-call ratio dropped to 0.7253 on May 27. That's a -2.0 standard deviation move below the 20-day mean of 0.757. Options positioning is as bullish as it has been in weeks.
The 52-week PCR range runs from 0.417 to 1.572. The current reading sits in the lower quarter of that range, consistent with call-heavy activity.
These two data points — surging short interest and a falling PCR — are pointing in opposite directions. Equity shorts are building exposure bearish on BBD. Options traders are leaning the other way.
BlackRock added 18.7 million shares as of April 30, bringing its holding to 461.8 million. Two Sigma added 25.1 million shares in the same period — a meaningful increase for a quantitative fund.
The ORTEX short score sits at 25.97, stable over the past two weeks. That score does not reflect the very recent short-interest spike, which only appeared in May 27 data.
Analyst consensus has a mean price target of $4.40 against a current price of $3.56. Citigroup upgraded to Buy last year. The stock is down ~10% over the past month.
Next earnings are scheduled for July 29.
What to watch: Whether the May 27 short-interest spike proves durable or unwinds quickly. A reversal would suggest it was mechanical. Persistence would indicate a deliberate institutional short at current levels — directly against the bullish options positioning now in place.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open BBD on ORTEX →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.
