As always, read through the old DDs, they are all over the place. tldr; it's running \~65% short with an active stock buyback and an active management team.
I have studied short volume data, fees, tickers etc over the last several years and it really is tough to wrap your head around what's going on. What I know for a fact is the 'iborrowdesk' numbers are sourced from IBKR, which is a aggregate of several different brokers. But it is not the entire picture, there is short volume out there that we have zero data on, but it typically works well as a proxy... particularly the rate. Short volume also != an increase in shares outstanding. Short volume can churn without staying borrowed - MMs use it a lot.
Monday super high short volume and still within the +2 of all of OPEX - I wasn't surprised at all with the drop. I was very surprised with the drop yesterday. It just seemed like all of the buying pressure disappeared. But I think it was partly option related.
The 30C Aug options caught some really big volume yesterday afternoon... around 2000 contracts (\~$360,000 in premium) hit pretty close together. I assumed it was contracts closing out. They weren't, the OI increased by \~1600 or so, only 400 were buying to close. Earnings coming up and a pretty aggressive gamma ramp going into August OPEX... around 25,000 contracts are OTM. And even today, the price is dropping a bit in the morning, but the bid on the 30C kept creeping up.
Today - obviously looks really bullish and the borrow fee jumped back up a bit
Position:
200 Aug 30C
I was kicking myself for getting greedy Wednesday - I wanted $3.20 instead of $3.00 - but that's life. Still unsure of when I'll close them, might be today EOD. Gun to my head, I still think this is more likely to hit $30 before Aug OPEX than $20.
**EDIT 1:50 EST:**
I really like this price action, pretty sure I won't close anything. Super low volume, borrow fee is back to ticking back up and the short volume is being used to control the run-ups, not drive the price down.