Coinbase Global heads into its June 16 earnings call with short interest still elevated and the options-market alarm that peaked last week now fading — leaving a more ambiguous setup than either of the past two notes described.
The sharpest change from last week is in options. The put/call ratio has retreated to 0.72, back near its 20-day average of 0.70 and well off the near-three-standard-deviation spike flagged in Tuesday's note. That prior defensive surge has unwound quickly — the z-score is now a modest 0.72, suggesting options traders are no longer piling into downside protection at the same urgency. The 52-week low on the PCR is 0.61; the current reading is closer to the middle of the range than to either extreme. The earnings hedge has, for now, been partially lifted.
Short interest tells a more persistent story. Bears have trimmed positions modestly — SI % of free float has eased to 10.9%, down from the 11.2% peak noted in last week's notes and the 11.7% high reached in mid-May. That's roughly 25 million shares short, a 2.3% decline on the week. The rollback is real but shallow; short interest remains well above the ~9.8% level from a month ago, meaning the rebuilding cycle that began in early May has not meaningfully reversed. The borrow market confirms there is no distress driving this position: cost to borrow has dropped sharply, falling 18.5% on the week to just 0.40% APR — the lowest in thirty days. Availability has loosened further to 347%, up from 309% a week ago, meaning the lending pool is ample. Shorts are here by choice, not necessity.
The Street is broadly cautious but not bearish. The consensus mean price target of $230 implies roughly 32% upside from the current $174 — but the direction of recent analyst moves has been almost uniformly downward. After Q1 results in early May, JPMorgan trimmed its target to $283 while keeping an Overweight rating. Barclays cut to $107 and remains Underweight. Most recently, B. Riley lowered to $203 on June 1, maintaining Neutral. Mizuho was the exception — it raised its target to $200 from $170 in mid-May, also staying Neutral. The pattern is a Street that still sees long-term value but is dialling back near-term price expectations. The ORTEX short score of 55.8 places Coinbase in the 14th percentile by short score rank — elevated but not extreme — while EPS momentum ranks in the bottom decile at 2, reflecting the deterioration in forward estimates that has driven most of those target cuts.
The bull case rests on Coinbase's positioning as the institutional onramp to crypto, with regulatory clarity improving and diversified revenue providing some buffer against transaction-fee volatility. The bear case centres on that same transaction-fee dependency: when crypto prices stall, volumes fall, and no amount of cost-cutting fully offsets the revenue drag. Both views are live. The stock is down 9% over the past month and 4.7% in the past session alone, lagging close peer HOOD, which gained 19% on the week — a divergence that underscores how stock-specific the pressure on COIN has been.
Post-earnings reactions have been constructive in recent quarters. The last two prints produced next-day moves of roughly +1.6% and +5.2% respectively, with five-day returns of +7.1% and +6.2%. That history will be tested on June 16, with the key question being whether transaction revenues held up well enough to justify a valuation — 61x trailing earnings, 16.8x EV/EBITDA — that still prices in meaningful growth.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open COIN on ORTEX →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.
