SoFi Technologies just put in its best week in months, yet the short base that has dogged the stock all year has barely moved.
The price action is the headline. SOFI closed Friday at $18.22, up 17% on the week and 7.4% on the day alone — a sharp recovery from the sub-$16 levels where CEO Anthony Noto was buying in mid-May. The move puts the stock back above several recent analyst targets and meaningfully above the $15.73–$16.00 range where Noto made those two open-market purchases. The rally is real. What has not followed it is any meaningful short covering.
Short interest remains at 14.7% of the free float — up 5.5% on the week, not down. That is an elevated position for a consumer finance name, and the direction of travel is notable: despite a 17% price move, bears added to rather than reduced their exposure. The borrow market has actually eased from the extreme tightness flagged in the previous note. Availability has recovered to 125%, up from the 52-week low of 98% recorded last week, and cost to borrow remains subdued at 0.48% — well within normal ranges. Those conditions give shorts room to maintain their positions without facing meaningful squeeze pressure. The ORTEX short score of 65.2 confirms the picture: elevated and stable, with only minor day-to-day variation over the past two weeks.
Options have shifted decisively in the other direction. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.42 — the lowest reading in the past 52 weeks, and slightly below its 20-day average of 0.44. That is a near-complete reversal from the defensive extreme flagged a week ago, when the PCR had spiked to 0.52. Call demand now dominates. The z-score of -0.90 confirms the lean is toward upside positioning, not protection — a meaningful change in tone from where options traders stood going into last week's close. SOFI's closest peers moved similarly: gained 17% on the week and rose 17.3%, suggesting a broad fintech re-rating rather than a SOFI-specific catalyst.
The Street has been recalibrating steadily lower since the April 29 earnings print, when the stock dropped 12% in a single session. Most covering analysts held their ratings but trimmed targets — Needham cut from $33 to $25, Citigroup from $37 to $30, TD Cowen from $24 to $18. The consensus mean target now sits at $21.00, which at $18.22 implies roughly 15% upside. That gap is tighter than it was a month ago but still gives the bull case room. The bull thesis centres on 43% year-over-year Q1 revenue growth, the Galileo platform expansion, and a one-stop-shop banking model that generates recurring deposit income. Bears point to credit risk in a slowdown, regulatory exposure, and heavy reliance on capital markets to fund growth. The P/E has expanded to 27.5x on the week's rally, up roughly 16% over seven days — a valuation re-rate that shorts may view as an opportunity rather than a warning sign.
With earnings on June 17, the setup is this: a stock that rallied hard into the print, a short base that grew through the rally, and options traders who have pivoted from maximum caution to maximum bullishness in one week. The last time SOFI printed earnings, it fell 12% on the day. Whether this week's repositioning in options is front-running a positive surprise — or whether the shorts rebuilding through the rally know something the call buyers do not — is the question the June 17 print will answer.
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