MakeMyTrip heads into the final stretch before its July earnings with one of the more interesting positioning shifts in the travel space this week — shorts are unwinding at pace while options traders have swung to their most bullish reading of the past year.
The short interest story is the headline. Borrowed shares have fallen roughly 26% over the past month, dropping from around 9.65 million to 7.1 million. That is a sustained, deliberate unwind — not noise. The retreat has been steady across every week since early May, and it accelerated this week with another 16.5% single-week decline. The ORTEX short score, a composite measure of short pressure, has responded accordingly, easing from 73.6 to 70.2 over just the past seven sessions. That is still an elevated absolute level, but the direction of travel is unambiguously lower.
The lending market corroborates the softer short posture. Borrow availability has loosened considerably — it jumped 27% in a week to nearly 79%, its widest reading in at least the past month and well above the tighter 46–52% range seen at the 52-week squeeze points. Cost to borrow has quietly drifted lower too, running near 0.60% — down 15% on the month. Together, these point to a borrow market that is returning to comfortable territory after a period of modest tightness. Shorts reducing positions into easier borrow conditions is the opposite of a squeeze setup; it looks more like orderly profit-taking or thesis abandonment.
Options are telling a strikingly different and more bullish story. The put/call ratio has dropped sharply to 0.28 — nearly three standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.33 — making this the most call-heavy options positioning seen in the past year (the 52-week low on the PCR stands at 0.20, so Thursday's 0.28 is approaching that extreme). That kind of skew, sustained rather than a one-day fluke given the trend visible through the history, suggests options traders are positioning for a move higher ahead of the July 21 earnings date. The combination of retreating short interest and aggressive call buying is a notable alignment.
The Street backdrop adds further texture. Analysts remain broadly constructive — the consensus carries Buy ratings from Citigroup and Bank of America, with a mean price target around $70. That implies more than 60% upside from the current $43.15 close, though it is worth noting the most recent target cuts (Citigroup lowered to $80 from $96 in April) reflect a pattern of steady downward revisions from peaks above $120. The gap between current price and targets has been compressed from both directions — the stock is down 4% over the past month and analysts have trimmed their numbers. On forward earnings the stock trades at roughly 21x — a multiple that has crept up modestly on the month — while EV/EBITDA sits near 20x. The 91st-percentile ranking on 12-month forward EPS growth points to strong expected earnings acceleration, though near-term EPS momentum (ranked in the bottom 10th percentile) suggests the market has been cautious about the near-term delivery.
Ownership is worth noting once. Baillie Gifford added close to 9.9 million shares in Q1 2026, lifting its stake to nearly 16% — a significant conviction build from a firm known for long-duration growth positions. Wellington, Artisan, and Wasatch all added modestly in the same period. The backdrop of sovereign and strategic holders — Trip.com controls 53%, Singapore's GIC holds 9.5%, Temasek added its full 1.7 million share position in Q1 — means the free float is genuinely small, which amplifies the effect of positioning shifts in either direction.
The May print offers one data point on reactions: the stock fell 4.5% the day after its last quarterly release and extended that to nearly 6% over the following week. The setup heading into July 21 — shorts pulling back, call buyers accumulating, a tightly held float, and a still-elevated short score — makes the magnitude of the next reaction as much a function of positioning as of the numbers themselves.
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