TECL, the Direxion Daily Technology Bull 3X ETF, has just delivered one of its sharpest monthly runs in recent memory.
The fund is up 73% over the past month and 18% in the last five trading sessions alone. The close at $245.39 on May 29 underscores just how aggressively tech sentiment has reversed. This is a leveraged instrument doing exactly what it was built to do — amplifying a powerful sector rally by a factor of three.
Options positioning tells the story of a market that has moved past fear and into conviction. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.36, running well below its 20-day average of 0.40 and sitting near the lower end of the past year's range. Demand for upside calls is dominating. The z-score of -0.77 is not extreme, but the direction of travel is consistent — PCR has been falling for over a week as call buying outpaces put buying. The year's high PCR of 0.76 now feels like a different era, back when hedges were the default.
The short story is genuinely uninteresting here — which is itself a data point. Short interest on TECL is roughly 1.2% of float, down nearly 73% from a month ago. In early-to-mid April, as tech sold off hard, short positions briefly spiked above 1.4 million shares; by late May those positions had been cut to around 400,000. Borrow is cheap at under 1%, and availability is broad at over 400% — meaning more than four shares are available to lend for every one currently borrowed. There is no squeeze pressure, no elevated cost, and no meaningful short-side tension. Shorts that leaned against the tech rebound have been largely flushed out.
The short score of 43 — mid-range, ticking higher this week from a low of 34 — reflects that recent mild uptick in short interest rather than any renewed conviction against the fund. It is worth watching as a directional gauge: if it starts climbing above 50 as the price holds high, that would indicate rebuilding of short positions at elevated levels.
What to watch next: whether the call-heavy options positioning sustains as the fund consolidates near its recent highs, and whether the brief uptick in short interest this week marks the beginning of fresh hedging activity or simply routine noise around a leveraged instrument at stretched levels.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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