SOXX has surged 32% in a month. Short sellers are responding by adding — not covering.
Short interest now stands at 16.7% of float. That's up 21.5% in one week alone, the highest level recorded in recent sessions. The May 27 convergence report flagged the initial build at 15.8% of float. That report proved directionally correct — shorts have added another full percentage point of float since then.
Availability has swung sharply in the past 48 hours. It briefly recovered to 41.9% on May 28. Then it collapsed again — hitting 20.4% on June 1 and 19.9% on June 2 before recovering modestly to 29.4% on June 3.
For context: availability stood at 175% on May 1. It is now under 30%. That is a collapse of more than 80 percentage points in five weeks.
Cost to borrow confirms the pressure. It hit 2.31% on June 3 — up 63% in a week and more than double the 1.04% level seen a month ago. In absolute terms the rate remains manageable, but the rate of change is the signal. Lenders are charging significantly more as the pool thins.
The 52-week availability low sits at 0.43%. The borrow market has been here before, and it got considerably tighter. That ceiling has room.
The put/call ratio sits at 3.49 — a z-score of 1.67 above the 20-day mean of 3.17. The 52-week high is 3.73, reached in late May. Options traders are not capitulating to the rally. Puts continue to dominate the order flow by a wide margin.
This marks a persistent divergence. The May 30 trader note flagged the PCR spike at 3.54 as "the most notable development of the week." The ratio hasn't meaningfully retreated. Heavy put hedging alongside rising short positions in the physical shares is an unusual double-down — two distinct markets expressing the same defensive view through different instruments.
The ORTEX short score has climbed steadily from 64.1 on May 20 to 66.4 on June 2. Each of the past ten sessions shows a higher reading than the last. The score reflects the combined weight of SI level, borrowing conditions, and options positioning — and all three are moving in the same direction.
The key question is whether availability continues to drift toward the danger zone below 20%. On May 25 it touched 17.8%. A return toward those levels — combined with the CTB already at a multi-month high — would signal that shorts are running out of room to add further without paying up meaningfully for the privilege.
Data snapshot (as of June 3–4, 2026)
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open SOXX 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.
