MS Options Skew Meets Falling Short Interest on Earnings Day

[Morgan Stanley](/s/us/ms) reports today. The options market is leaning defensive. Short sellers, meanwhile, have been quietly exiting for weeks.

These two signals point in opposite directions — and together they tell a nuanced pre-earnings story.

## Puts Stack Up as Earnings Arrive

The put/call ratio hit 1.47 on May 13. That's a z-score of 2.23 against a 20-day mean of 1.42. Traders are…