Ramaco Resources has had a remarkable week. The stock jumped 18.3% to $17.52 — and is up again 6.2% on Tuesday — driven by a high-profile catalyst: Bloomberg reported this week that the Trump administration plans a $700 million push to build coal plants and export infrastructure. For a met coal producer with a rare earths kicker, that headline landed at exactly the right moment.
The short interest setup makes the move all the more striking. Roughly one-in-three free-float shares is currently borrowed against — short interest runs at 33.3% of free float, a level that has barely budged over the past six weeks. It was 34.1% in mid-April, 33.4% last Monday, and 33.3% today. With short interest stable at that scale and the stock suddenly ripping, the arithmetic becomes uncomfortable for the bears: covering into a thin, rising market on a policy headline is an unwelcome combination. The ORTEX short score of 74.4 ranks in the lowest 1% of the universe on a percentile basis — a sign this is among the most shorted names the platform tracks. Days to cover, per the latest FINRA filing, stretches to 6.7 days.
Borrow conditions tell a more relaxed story. Despite the extreme short positioning, cost to borrow has actually eased sharply — down 28% on the week to just 0.44% annualised, a multi-week low. Availability has also loosened materially: it climbed to roughly 101% of outstanding short interest this week, compared to a tighter 72-80% range seen through late May. That means the lending pool currently holds almost as many shares available to borrow as are already borrowed. The squeeze mechanics are not yet firing on the borrow side — there is still fresh supply for shorts who want to add. Options traders are equally relaxed: the put/call ratio of 0.25 is actually fractionally below its 20-day mean, and the z-score of -0.77 shows no unusual hedging demand. Call activity has if anything picked up slightly into the move.
The analyst backdrop is mixed, and data is running about three weeks stale as of this note. B. Riley and Baird both trimmed targets in mid-May — to $22 and $25 respectively — while maintaining Buy and Outperform ratings. Both cuts followed what appears to have been a volatile Q1 report period. Goldman's Brian Lee upgraded the stock from Sell to Neutral on April 21, nudging his target to $15 — which, with the stock now at $17.52, his call has already been exceeded. Morgan Stanley sits at Equal-Weight with a $17 target. The mean target across the coverage sits near $27, though given the recent churn in estimates, investors should treat that number as a broad range rather than a precise anchor. EPS momentum is a standout positive: the factor score ranks in the 99th percentile on a 30-day basis and the 85th percentile over 90 days, suggesting estimate upgrades have been arriving at pace even as some target prices fell.
The catalyst pipeline is real too. Ramaco signed a non-binding MOU with REalloys on May 28 to examine an offtake agreement for rare earths and scandium extracted from its coal-hosted resources — a story that got modest market attention at the time but sits in a very different light now that the White House is explicitly backing coal infrastructure. CEO Randall Atkins appeared on CNBC the same week. The next earnings event is pencilled for June 10, just one week away. Based on recent history, the stock has tended to gap up on the day of a release — the last two prints produced 1-day moves of roughly +0.9% and +11.5% respectively — but the five-day window has been negative both times, suggesting initial enthusiasm fades once the fine print emerges.
Institutional ownership is concentrated: Yorktown Partners holds 16.4% of shares, Discovery Capital added 358,000 shares as recently as May and now controls 8.3%, and Millennium Management built a near-4% stake in the first quarter from close to zero. That kind of accumulation by active managers with clear commodity convictions gives the stock a structural support layer — but the flip side is that those same names can move the market on exit. The insider register shows net selling in the 90-day window, largely through Board member Bryan Hunt Lawrence, who trimmed across several tranches in late March at prices in the $13.60–$15.30 range. At $17.52, those sellers look early.
With the June 10 earnings report one week out, the week ahead will be defined by whether the Trump coal policy headline has staying power and whether shorts — holding a position that has not materially changed in six weeks — decide to defend or retreat as the stock tests levels they last shorted into.
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