Quantum Computing Inc. heads into early June with shorts trimming exposure and the stock up 5% on the week, yet the lending market remains one of the tightest in the market.
Short sellers have been quietly reducing positions over the past two weeks. Short interest as a percentage of free float peaked near 32% between May 18 and May 26 before pulling back to 29.4% by June 2 — a meaningful eight-session unwind of roughly 5.4 million borrowed shares. The weekly decline of around 8% in borrowed shares is the sharpest retreat since mid-April. That unwinding has contributed to the 5% price gain over the week, with QUBT closing at $12.25 on June 2 after a 33% rise over the past month. Even after the partial cover, short interest remains deeply elevated: nearly three in ten free-float shares are still in bearish hands.
The lending market tells a more uncomfortable story for anyone trying to add to those shorts. Availability has been near zero for extended stretches this month — it hit 0% on five consecutive sessions between May 21 and May 25, meaning the entire lending pool was already lent out. It recovered slightly to 5.6% by June 2, but that still leaves fewer than six shares available for every hundred already borrowed. Cost to borrow, at 2.66% annualised, is notably cheaper than where it was a month ago — down almost 20% on the week after a brief spike — which may reflect a modest loosening at the margin following the short-covering. Still, with availability this low and short interest still above 29%, the borrow market is firmly in the "very tight" zone, and any renewed bearish conviction would quickly drain whatever capacity has returned.
Options positioning offers the sharpest contrast to the cautious short-seller stance. The put/call ratio hit 0.54 on June 2 — the lowest reading in the past year and more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.62. Traders are not hedging. They are positioning aggressively for the upside, with call volume running at its most bullish extreme since at least June 2025. The disconnect is notable: short sellers hold a near-record position while options buyers are as bullish as they have been all year.
The Street's picture is mixed, though somewhat dated. The most recent analyst action was Northland Capital Markets initiating in April with an Outperform rating and a $20 target — about 63% above the current price. Before that, Cantor Fitzgerald cut its target from $15 to $10 in March while keeping a Neutral. Rosenblatt maintained a Buy with a $22 target around the same time. The mean analyst target sits at $17.40, implying roughly 42% upside from $12.25, though it is worth noting the overall analyst data is around 83 days old and may not fully reflect the stock's sharp move higher. The ORTEX short score of 71.3 places QUBT in the bottom 2nd percentile of its universe on that measure — a signal that the quantitative lending and positioning data remain deeply bearish even as the stock has rallied.
Bulls lean on the photonics technology platform, QUBT's reservoir computing and sensing product revenues, and a positioning in the quantum supply chain that could benefit well before gate-model quantum computing reaches mass adoption. The bear case is grounded in near-term realities: pre-profitability operations, deeply negative return on assets, intense competition from IBM, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and ongoing dilution risk. The earnings reaction history is instructive without being conclusive — the May 13 print prompted a modest one-day dip of 0.4% followed by a 19% five-day loss, while the May 11 announcement drove a sharp 23% single-day surge that subsequently faded to near-flat over the following week. The next scheduled event is August 14.
On the ownership side, the largest holder is Yuping Huang at 10.8% of shares, who added nearly one million shares in late April. BlackRock holds 7.2% and added modestly in the same period. The most recent insider activity showed the CFO selling roughly $614,000 of stock in March — small in absolute terms but consistent with the broader pattern of insiders selling into the stock's elevated price range.
What to watch: whether the partial short-cover consolidates or reverses in the sessions ahead will be the key tell — a return of availability to near-zero would indicate renewed borrow demand and potential for another leg of squeeze pressure, while a sustained loosening of the lending market would suggest the short-covering phase has run its course.
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