A heavy earnings week is under way. Ulta Beauty reports Q1 2027 results after today's close. Dollar General holds its earnings call this morning — the discount retailer trades at a $24.4B market cap with 3.9% of float short. Medtronic follows Tuesday before the open. Later in the week, Credo Technology reports tonight. Bulls are in charge heading into the print, with SI at just 5.7% of free float and options dated out to August showing bullish positioning.
Short sellers are betting big ahead of prints. Intuitive Machines carries 24.4% SI % FF with borrow availability near zero at 2%. Every bear metric has escalated into Thursday's earnings. Replimune presents the opposite risk — shorts sit at 44.9% of free float but the stock has rallied 260%. A squeeze into earnings remains a live threat. Separately, shorts jumped 15.8 points in a week to a remarkable 130% of free float, reflecting heavy synthetic selling.
Large insider sales dominated filings this week. CVS board member Larry Robbins exited over $296M in shares. Ralph Lauren filed a $100M sale of RL stock. The Walton Family Trust sold more than $251M of WMT. Against that tide, Bill Gates accumulated over $85M of RSG shares in a deliberate multi-day buy.
Iran-war tensions are pushing fuel costs higher. Governor Gavin Newsom flagged the geopolitical link directly to pump prices, putting energy stocks like CVX in focus. Analysts lifted targets on DELL and MU, reinforcing the AI infrastructure trade as the week's dominant bullish theme.
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.
