Yuka Group, Inc. enters the final days of April under pressure — the stock is down 22.5% on the week and short interest jumped dramatically in a single session, even as the overall short position remains tiny relative to the float.
The most striking data point this week is the velocity of the short interest move, not its size. Estimated short shares leapt to roughly 22,400 on April 28, up more than 420% in a single day and up 242% over the week. In absolute terms, the position is negligible — just 0.048% of the free float — so this is not a crowded short by any standard measure. But the sharp intraday build, jumping from a flat 4,258 shares the day before, coincides with the steepest weekly price drop the stock has seen in recent months.
Availability in the lending market is unusually loose given the short interest level. With availability running at roughly 686% of short interest, there is far more supply in the borrow pool than demand — meaning new shorts face no friction entering positions. Cost to borrow has eased slightly over the week to 15.6%, down from around 16.2% at the start of April, though it remains well above the 7–9% range seen in autumn 2025. That gradual drift higher in borrow costs since late last year suggests the lending market has steadily tightened over a longer timeframe, even if the absolute short position is small.
The ORTEX short score also moved sharply this week. It jumped to 50.4 on April 28 from a range of 32.7–32.8 where it had been anchored for nearly two weeks. That is a meaningful one-day step-change in how the composite model is reading the setup — driven primarily by the short interest surge — and puts the score squarely in the middle of the 0–100 range for the first time in at least a month. The 52-week peak on utilization sits at 61%, and the current reading of 49% is the highest since that peak, having been below 1% for most of April before jumping overnight on April 28.
Valuation and analyst data are not usable here. The company carries a market cap of approximately $2.7 million and trades on the OTC Pink market at $0.0465, and any fundamental data on record is well over three years old. The price alone illustrates the micro-cap, speculative nature of the name: a single cent move is a 20% swing.
What to watch is whether the short interest build on April 28 represents a one-session spike that unwinds quickly — as happened in earlier episodes like the April 13 bump that faded within days — or marks the beginning of a more sustained positioning change in an otherwise thinly traded stock.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open YUKA 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.
