Capricor Therapeutics enters the new week with a genuinely interesting tension: the bear campaign that drove short interest to multi-month highs has started to soften, but the stock keeps falling anyway.
The short position is finally retreating — modestly. Short interest eased to 24.2% of the free float as of June 10, down roughly 1% on the week and off the 25.1% peak hit on June 4 that was flagged in the prior notes. That pullback is still small relative to the month-long build: bears added nearly 12% to their position over May, and the ORTEX short score has barely moved, settling at 73.2 on June 10 versus the 74.3 peak. What's changed is the direction. This week marks the first sequential decline in short interest after a sustained accumulation phase. The borrow market reinforces the read: cost to borrow has drifted lower to 0.50%, and availability has loosened meaningfully — from roughly 197% two weeks ago back to 251% now, meaning the lending pool has more headroom than it did when the squeeze risk was at its highest. Positioning looks heavy but no longer accelerating.
Options traders are not worried about the downside. The put/call ratio runs at 0.39, below its 20-day mean of 0.41 and sitting at the low end of the recent range — nearly the tightest call-skew reading of the past year. That implies options participants are either not adding fresh hedges into the slide or are actively tilting toward calls. Taken alongside the short interest softening, the signal is that at least part of the market sees the current $25 level as a potential floor rather than a staging point for further pressure. That is not a bullish call — it is an observation that the positioning mix is less uniformly bearish than it appeared a week ago.
The fundamental picture remains challenged. CAPR is an unprofitable clinical-stage biotech, and the valuation multiples reflect that: EV/EBITDA runs at -7.2 and the PE ratio is deeply negative. The 30-day PE shift of roughly 48.5 points signals deteriorating earnings optics as the stock has re-rated lower. On the factor side, the short score ranks in the bottom decile of the universe (8th percentile), confirming CAPR is among the more heavily shorted names screened by ORTEX. Bulls can point to the DMD program data showing cardiac improvements and a cash position cited at $318M earlier this year — runway that, while finite, is not immediately crisis-level. Bears point to the May earnings miss, the 15.6% five-day post-print drawdown, and a stock that has shed 17% over the past month to $25.33 with no obvious catalyst to arrest the move.
Institutional flows add a wrinkle worth watching. Several funds initiated or materially enlarged positions in Q1: Suvretta Capital added nearly 2.9 million shares, Tang Capital added 1.7 million, and State Street added 1.35 million. BlackRock also added 571,000 shares as recently as May. These are meaningful builds into a period when the stock was trading in the low-to-mid $30s — all of those entries are now underwater. Point72, by contrast, trimmed over one million shares in Q1. On the insider side, the CFO and General Counsel each sold $792,000 worth of stock on May 1 at $31.70 — also now well above current levels. There is no insider buying in the recent record.
With the next earnings event scheduled for August 6, the key variable between now and then is whether the short covering that began this week develops into a more sustained unwind — or whether the bear camp views the slight easing as a pause rather than a retreat.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open CAPR 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.
