FORR heads into earnings with short sellers holding firm

Forrester Research carries meaningful short pressure into its May 6 earnings call — and shorts have been quietly adding positions all month while the stock recovers.

Short interest at Forrester is genuinely elevated. It is running at 13.2% of free float, up from around 11.6% at the start of April — a gain of roughly 130 basis points over the month. That build has been steady rather than dramatic, with positions accumulating gradually through the tariff-volatility period in early April before holding near the 13% level for the past two weeks. Days to cover stands at 14, reflecting the thin daily trading volumes on this micro-cap research firm. The ORTEX short score of 71.6 places Forrester in the top tier of short conviction across the universe, and it has barely moved all month — suggesting this is a patient, entrenched short rather than a tactical momentum trade.

The borrow market tells a broadly consistent story, though conditions are not especially extreme. Availability remains adequate — about two-thirds of the lending pool is still unused — and the cost to borrow is only 1.1%, up roughly 9% on the week but still far below any level that would pinch a short position. That combination — heavy SI relative to float, long days-to-cover, stable borrow cost — describes a situation where shorts are sitting comfortably, not facing squeeze pressure. The options market adds little drama: the put/call ratio at 157.8 is running slightly above its 20-day average of 156, but with a z-score under 0.75, there is no unusual defensive positioning to speak of.

What makes Forrester interesting ahead of May 6 is the earnings history. Every print in the data has been met with selling. The February 2026 results sent the stock down 14.5% in a single session and 10.4% over the following week. The prior print, in October 2025, saw a 14.6% drop on the day and a 9.9% five-day loss. Shorts holding 14 days of cover through those reactions would have been very well positioned — and the consistency of post-earnings declines is exactly the kind of pattern that sustains an entrenched short thesis.

Against that backdrop, the stock has quietly risen 11.7% over the past month to $6.31, including a 1.3% gain on the week. Peers have been mixed: ADP surged nearly 8% on the day and TNET added 5.2% on the week, while CNXC dropped 14.2% over the same period. Forrester's relative calm looks more like a stock finding its footing than a genuine re-rating. The company also launched an AI agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot this week — a product designed to deliver Forrester research directly into corporate workflows — which at least shows management is threading the AI narrative into the business model.

The analyst picture offers little clarity. The sole active rating is a hold, and all recent changes in the data are from 2023 or earlier — too stale to carry weight at the current price of $6.31. Valuation data is similarly dated and should be treated with caution. What is clear is that Forrester is a thinly covered, closely held name: founder George Colony controls 38.5% of shares, and institutional ownership is fragmented among small-cap specialists. Insider activity in April amounted to a cluster of small tax-cover sales on April 1 following routine stock awards across the C-suite — low significance, standard practice.

The next event — Q1 2026 earnings on May 6 — is the thing to watch. With shorts sitting at a three-year high relative to float, 14 days of cover to unwind, and a track record of sharp post-earnings drops, the setup heading into the print is anything but neutral.