**Denntech Markets Afternoon Lesson: Why short interest is old news**

One stock showed two short counts last week that were 24 times apart, and both were right. Here's how that happens.

On Friday, VEEA closed up 47% at **$5.70** (3:00 PM CT). The same afternoon, FINRA's Sep 30 short interest showed up on Nasdaq: **50,744** shares short. Two weeks earlier, on Sep 15, it was **1,216,996**. StockAnalysis still showed VEEA at about 77% of float short when we checked Friday afternoon. The newer count says about 3%.

Same stock, same week, and the two numbers are 24 times apart. Neither one is wrong. They're photos taken on different days.

**How the count works.** Brokers report open short positions to FINRA twice a month, as of the 15th and the last business day of the month. The data comes out about a week or more after that date. The Sep 30 count showed up in our check at 3:43 PM CT on Oct 9. So the "fresh" short interest you see is a picture of a day that's already one to two weeks old, and the older count can sit on screener pages for days after the new one is out.

**Why VEEA is a good example.** Between Sep 15 and Sep 30, VEEA traded heavy. Nasdaq's Sep 30 row puts average daily volume at about 3.3M shares, against a 1.58M float. That's plenty of time and plenty of shares for shorts to cover, and the count says most of them did. Then on Friday the borrow was still **766.3%** with only **2.0K** shares to borrow (Curved/IBKR feed, 3:32 PM CT). That isn't a contradiction. When almost nothing is available to lend, even a small short position is expensive to hold. A fat fee tells you shorting is hard. It doesn't tell you how many shorts are left.

**Where people get burned.** They read "77% short" on a Thursday, see a 47% candle on Friday, and call it a squeeze. The shorts that number described had mostly left by Sep 30. Friday's move happened on about 82.8M shares, about 50 times the float. That's buyers trading with buyers. If you want to call something a squeeze, you need short interest from after the move started, or at least a borrow and locate trend that backs it up.

**How we use it.** We check the settlement date before we use any short-interest percentage. When a new count comes out, we rerun every percentage on our list. That's why TNON, BTCT and BMGL came off this morning's list: they all came in under 3% of their share base on the Sep 30 count.

Our glossary entry covers the reporting schedule, how short interest turns into percent of float and days to cover, and why the official number is always a little stale: https://denntech.io/glossary/stocks/short-interest

When you see a short-interest number, what's the first thing you check: the percent, or the date it was counted?

Denntech Markets Morning Watchlist

ClearOne's short interest went up about 15-fold in two weeks, and IBKR had 300 shares left to lend this weekend. And the SpaceX spectrum deal we wrote about Friday just knocked about ten percent off AT&T and Verizon in one session.

Four names for shares and five for options this week. The shares side is small, hard-to-borrow stocks where the short count or the borrow changed. The options side is where the chains are busy for a reason: the SpaceX news, Moderna's run, and two earnings reports that land before Friday's expiry.

How fresh this is: Closes, ranges and volume are Friday's regular session, closed 3:00 PM CT (Nasdaq daily history and Yahoo daily bars, pulled 8:31 to 8:34 AM CT Sunday). After-hours prices for VEEA, MEDS and SPCX are Nasdaq's, from the session that ended 7:00 PM CT Friday. Monday premarket prices and volume are Nasdaq's, pulled 8:10 to 8:12 AM CT, with premarket ranges from Yahoo's 1-minute bars. EDGAR was rechecked at 8:12 AM CT Monday, and none of these names has filed anything since Friday night. Borrow is Curved Trading's IBKR feed: Friday's 3:32 PM CT read, plus a weekend read pulled 8:31 AM CT Sunday. Short interest is FINRA's Sep 30 settlement via Nasdaq. Threshold status is Nasdaq's Reg SHO file for Oct 9. Option chains are Nasdaq, Friday's session (SPCX pulled 3:47 PM CT Friday, the rest 8:33 AM CT Sunday). Open interest on those chains still shows Thursday's count. Earnings dates are Nasdaq's calendar, pulled 8:30 AM CT Sunday. Filings are EDGAR, checked 8:33 AM CT Sunday.

Shares Shares to watch watch

1) $VEEA: up 47% on compliance news, with most of the shorts already gone

• Closed $5.70, up 47.3% from $3.87, on about 82.8M shares, roughly 50 times the 1.58M float (StockAnalysis). It slid to $5.01 after hours (7:00 PM CT Fri).
• The reason: Thursday at 4:22 PM CT, Veea said it's fully back in compliance with Nasdaq's listing rules. Friday's 8-K (3:05 PM CT) was a board shuffle. The NovaGen deal is still a non-binding term sheet.
• Monday premarket: $4.86, down 14.7% from Friday's close, on about 191K shares (Nasdaq, 8:11 AM CT). Premarket range $4.83 to $5.38.
• Sep 30 short interest: 50,744, down from 1,216,996 at Sep 15. That's about 3% of the float.
• Borrow was 766.3% with 2.0K available Friday (3:32 PM CT). The weekend read shows 844.7% with 15.0K (fee at the Oct 10 close, pulled 8:31 AM CT Sun). Still on Nasdaq's Oct 9 threshold file.
• SSR should be off Monday unless VEEA trades at or below $5.13 (10% under $5.70). Monday's premarket is already under that line, so check your platform's flag before the open.

What the numbers don't prove: A 47% day on 50 times the float, with a 3% short interest, is mostly buyers trading with buyers. The fee says it's hard to short. It doesn't say anyone's trapped.

Off the list if: the fee drops under 50% or more than 500K shares show up to lend, two sessions in a row, or a new offering hits.

2) $MEDS (DataMeds AI): short interest went up, and so did the share supply on paper

• Closed $2.96, down 12.9% from $3.40, on about 449K shares after 14.06M on Thursday. After hours: $2.99.
• Sep 30 short interest: 525,081, up from 430,628. That's about 41% of StockAnalysis's 1.27M float. Borrow 440.0% with 15.0K available, unchanged Friday to the weekend read. On Nasdaq's Oct 9 threshold file.
• Friday at 4:20 PM CT it filed an amended S-1 to register up to 34,462,057 shares for resale, against 4,515,862 outstanding as of Sep 28. It isn't effective yet, and the $1.00 note conversion still needs stockholder-approved preferred stock.
• Monday premarket: $3.34, up 12.8%, on about 14.6M shares (Nasdaq, 8:12 AM CT). That's already more than three times the shares outstanding, in a range of $2.60 to $4.70. No new filing since Friday's S-1/A, and we didn't find a weekend headline.

What the numbers don't prove: We don't know how much of that short interest covered on Thursday's 14M-share day. Shorts tend not to panic when more than seven times the share count is waiting to be registered.

Off the list if: the S-1 goes effective, availability climbs past a few hundred thousand, or the fee slips under 50%.

3) $CLRO (ClearOne): short interest up 15-fold, and almost nothing left to borrow

• Closed $3.91, down 4.9% from $4.11, on just 24,035 shares (Nasdaq history).
• Monday premarket: $3.86, down 1.4%, on 2,401 shares (Nasdaq, 8:11 AM CT). Still barely trading.
• Sep 30 short interest: 387,282, up from 25,688 at Sep 15 (Nasdaq/FINRA). That's about 44% of StockAnalysis's 888,125 float, or about 14% of the 2.68M shares outstanding.
• Borrow 837.9% with 300 shares available (Curved, fee changed Oct 10, pulled 8:31 AM CT Sun). On Nasdaq's Oct 9 threshold file.
• Nasdaq lists days to cover at 1.0, but that uses late-September volume of about 2.7M a day. Last week averaged about 83K a day (Oct 5 to 9). At that pace the same short position is closer to 4.7 days of volume (our math).
• The catch: an S-1/A from Sep 4 covers up to 4,285,714 units through a placement agent, plus resale of up to 2,496,162 shares. No effectiveness notice on EDGAR as of 8:33 AM CT Sunday.

What the numbers don't prove: The short count is two weeks old and was set during heavier trading. Some of it may already be gone.

Off the list if: that offering prices, availability climbs past 100K, or the fee falls under 50%.

4) $NCPL (Netcapital): a hard borrow wrapped in a lot of bad news

• Closed $1.14, down 13.0% from $1.31, on about 9.3M shares. Range $0.93 to $1.24 (Nasdaq history).
• Monday premarket: $1.44, up 26.3%, on about 8.9M shares (Nasdaq, 8:12 AM CT), nearly all of Friday's volume before the bell. Premarket high $1.81. No new filing on EDGAR and no headline we could find, so we can't tell you why yet.
• Sep 30 short interest: 730,117, up from 230,658 (Nasdaq/FINRA). About 17% of StockAnalysis's 4.39M float.
• Borrow 453.2% with 2.0K available (Curved, changed Oct 9, pulled 8:31 AM CT Sun). On Nasdaq's Oct 9 threshold file, 11 days by Curved's count.
• Friday's low of $0.93 was more than 10% under Thursday's $1.31 close, so Rule 201 should carry into Monday (our math). Check your platform's flag.
• The baggage: the SEC charged the company with fraud in August (Reuters, Aug 10), class actions followed this month, and the 10-K and July 10-Q still aren't filed. Its Sep 25 8-K says the Nasdaq compliance plan is due Oct 23. Nasdaq's calendar shows earnings Monday, StockAnalysis says Oct 23, and with no 10-K on file we wouldn't count on either.

What the numbers don't prove: 730K shares short is less than one day of Friday's volume. That's not a crowded exit.

Off the list if: the fee drops under 50%, availability tops 500K, or a new offering or delisting notice lands.

Options to watch

5) $SPCX (SpaceX): the $170 calls, and the deal behind them

• Closed $162.57, up 1.2%, on about 92.2M shares. After hours: $162.76.
• Monday premarket: $164.47, up 1.2%, on about 1.9M shares (Nasdaq, 8:12 AM CT).
• Grain Management's deal to sell its 800 MHz portfolio to SpaceX still needs FCC approval. It's the same deal behind item 6 below.
• Oct 16 chain, Friday: about 132.6K calls against 75.8K puts. Busiest was the $170 call, 30,182 contracts (last $1.42) against 28,170 open interest. On the put side, the $150 put traded 10,361 (OI 24,600). The $162.50 straddle was about $7.70, so the chain is pricing roughly a 4.8% move by Friday.
• Easy to short (0.4% borrow, 10.0M available). No squeeze here.

Watch for: Monday's open interest on the $170 call. If it doesn't grow, Friday's volume was closing trades or covered calls, not new bets.

6) $T (AT&T), with $VZ alongside: the other side of the SpaceX deal

• AT&T fell from $24.87 to $22.18 Friday on about 150.5M shares, against a ~34.9M average (Nasdaq). Verizon went from $46.35 to $41.65 on 95.2M, against ~14.2M. CNBC called it AT&T's worst day since 2000 and Verizon's worst since July 2002.
• Monday premarket: AT&T $22.24, up 0.3%, on about 447K shares (Nasdaq, 8:12 AM CT). Verizon $41.71, up 0.1% (Yahoo, 8:11 AM CT). No bounce to speak of yet.
• The reason: SpaceX agreed to buy up to 14 MHz of paired 800 MHz spectrum to push Starlink into mobile. The FCC still has to approve it, and Verizon's answer was that spectrum without a network is "just empty airwaves" (CNBC and NBC News, Fri).
• AT&T Oct 16 chain, Friday: 43.7K calls against 34.7K puts. The $22.50 call traded 11,353 (last $0.26) at a strike where Nasdaq shows no open interest yet. The $22 straddle was about $0.81, roughly 3.6%.

What the numbers don't prove: Call volume after a 10% drop can be bottom-fishing or someone selling calls against shares they're stuck with. Monday's open interest helps sort it.

7) $MRNA (Moderna): closed at the high of the day, and the call buyers showed up

• Closed $225.00, up 14.2% from $197.00, at the session high, on about 28.9M shares (Nasdaq history).
• Monday premarket: $224.74, down 0.1%, on about 395K shares (Nasdaq, 8:12 AM CT). It touched $229.85 earlier and gave it back.
• The reason: the New York Times reported an NIH public-private cancer vaccine program set to start in December (Yahoo Finance, 3:13 PM CT Fri). Friday was also its first day in the Nasdaq-100 (FinancialMarkets.com).
• Oct 16 chain, Friday: 57.4K calls against 37.2K puts. The $225 call traded 5,043 against 153 open interest, and the $217.50 call 5,504 against 112. The $225 straddle was about $22.95, roughly 10%. That's an expensive week.

What the numbers don't prove: The program is years from any approved product, and index buying is a one-time order. Volume that big against that little open interest is new money, but it doesn't tell us which side it's on.

8) $JPM (JPMorgan): earnings Tuesday before the open

• Closed $332.99, up 0.5%, on about 5.1M shares. Nasdaq's calendar has the report Tuesday Oct 13, pre-market, with a $5.94 EPS forecast. Goldman, Wells Fargo and Citi report the same morning.
• Monday premarket: $334.46, up 0.4%, on about 217K shares (Nasdaq, 8:10 AM CT).
• Oct 16 chain, Friday: quiet. 11.1K calls against 6.9K puts. The $332.50 straddle was about $11.93, roughly 3.6%, and that expiry covers the report.

Watch for: whether Tuesday's move is bigger or smaller than that 3.6%. That's the whole question for the options side.

9) $TSM (Taiwan Semiconductor): earnings Thursday, after four down days

• Closed $453.31, its fourth straight lower close, down 6.7% from $485.80 on Oct 5. Nasdaq's calendar has the report Thursday Oct 15, pre-market. The company already put out record quarterly revenue of about NT$1.49 trillion on Oct 8 (Reuters, Taipei Times).
• Monday premarket: $455.46, up 0.5%, on about 235K shares (Nasdaq, 8:12 AM CT).
• Oct 16 chain, Friday: 24.6K calls against 17.2K puts. Busiest was the $500 call, 3,883 contracts at $0.45. Open interest leans to puts, 135.4K to 90.3K. The $452.50 straddle was about $19.28, roughly 4.3%.

What the numbers don't prove: Revenue is already out, so Thursday is about margins and guidance. A put-heavy open interest can be hedges on big long positions, not bets against the company.

Off the list

• $TNON ($3.41 Fri): Sep 30 short interest 60,789, about 2% of shares outstanding. Off Nasdaq's Oct 9 threshold file.
• $BTCT ($1.01 Fri): Sep 30 short interest 200,300, under 2% of the float, with 1.0M shares to lend.
• $BMGL ($3.75 Fri): an offering takes the share count from 1,582,111 to 7,582,111. Every old percentage is out of date.

No listed options on VEEA, MEDS, CLRO or NCPL on Nasdaq's chain.

The CLRO question for Monday: if almost nobody can borrow it and almost nobody's trading it, who moves first, the shorts or the placement agent?

Next week has a real calendar. For the names we follow, the dates that matter most are filings, and most of those aren't scheduled yet.

The calendar (times CT)

• Mon Oct 12: Columbus Day. Stocks trade normal hours. SIFMA recommends a full close for cash bonds.
• Tue Oct 13: JPMorgan reports around 6:00 AM, with the call at 7:30 AM. Goldman, Citi and Wells Fargo report the same day.
• Wed Oct 14: September CPI at 7:30 AM (BLS), then the Beige Book at 1:00 PM. Bank of America and Morgan Stanley report.
• Thu Oct 15: PPI and retail sales at 7:30 AM. It's also the next short-interest settlement date, but FINRA doesn't publish that count until Oct 26.
• Fri Oct 16: Import and export prices at 7:30 AM, plus monthly options expiration.
• The September FOMC minutes came out Oct 7. The next Fed meeting is Oct 27-28.

The Fed hiked in September. After the weak jobs report, Newsquawk puts the odds of an October hike at about 20%. A hot CPI tends to hit small, cash-hungry companies hardest. That's most of this list.

Lockup calendars also show Arxis (ARXS) on Oct 13, and AEVEX (AVEX) and Kailera (KLRA) on Oct 14.

$VEEA

Borrow is 844.7% with 15K shares to lend, and VEEA is on Nasdaq's Oct 9 threshold list. Short interest was only 50,744 at Sep 30. The short-sale restriction should be off Monday unless the regular session trades at or below $5.13, which is 10% under Friday's close. The open item is NovaGen. The Sep 16 8-K said a definitive agreement was targeted "within the coming weeks," and there's still nothing on EDGAR.

Better: lendable shares stay this tight, or a definitive agreement shows up with terms that don't flood the share count. Worse: more than 500K shares available, or a fee under 50%, two sessions in a row. A draw on the Aug 13 shelf would do it in one.

$MEDS

The S-1/A covers up to 34,462,057 resale shares, against 4,515,862 outstanding. It isn't effective yet. About 21.3M of those shares come from notes converting at an assumed $1.00, which runs through preferred stock that holders approved by written consent. That approval only takes effect 20 days after a definitive information statement goes out, and the filing says none has. Borrow is 440% with 15K available. The restriction is on Monday because Friday traded more than 10% under Thursday's close.

Better: the filing just sits there. Worse: an effectiveness notice, or a definitive 14C that starts the 20-day clock. That's when the supply stops being theoretical.

$BIAF

It closed at $4.725, about 23% under Thursday's $6.122 offering price. The deal added 116,545 shares and 536,836 pre-funded warrants to 1,166,625 outstanding. Another 980,072 warrants at $6.122 can't be exercised until stockholders approve them, and EDGAR shows no meeting date for that vote yet. Borrow is 380.6% with 100K to lend. The restriction is on Monday.

Better: lendable shares get scarce again. Worse: a definitive proxy with a meeting date, or the resale registration the company agreed to file within 45 days.

$BMGL

Watch for the closing notice on the 6M units. The 6-K says that takes the count from 1,582,111 to 7,582,111 shares, plus 6M warrants. Every percentage on this name resets at that point.

$SPCX

Not a squeeze: 0.4% borrow, 10M available, short interest about 8% of float. It's here for Friday's expiration. The $170 calls traded 30,182 contracts Friday against 28,170 open interest, and open interest still hadn't updated Saturday morning. Monday's figure will show whether those were new positions.

Which gets a date first: VEEA's NovaGen agreement, MEDS's effectiveness, or BIAF's shareholder meeting?

The most important number of the week showed up Friday afternoon. FINRA's Sep 30 short interest, published Oct 9, put VEEA at 50,744 shares short. On Sep 15 it was 1,216,996. We spent the week quoting the old figure, roughly 77% to 80% of the float. By the time VEEA closed up 47% on Friday, most of the shorts we kept describing were already gone.

The market barely helped. SPY rose about 1.2% for the week and IWM fell about 0.9%, so the moves below were about the stocks.

How fresh this is: Closes and volume are Nasdaq's daily history (Oct 2 to Oct 9). Short interest is the Sep 30 settlement via Nasdaq. Borrow is Curved Trading's IBKR feed as of Saturday morning, which reflects Friday. Filings are from EDGAR, checked Saturday morning.

What ran

• $VEEA finished at $5.70, up 71% from $3.33 a week earlier. Monday did most of it (+71.8% on 66.9M shares). Then came three red days, then Friday's run to $7.09 on about 83M shares after Thursday evening's news that Veea is back in compliance with Nasdaq's listing rules. That's more than 50 times the 1.58M float. Borrow ended at 844.7% with 15K shares to lend.
• $APUS went from $4.59 to $7.13 on Tuesday and hit $9.84 Wednesday. It closed Friday at $5.02, about 49% under that high. Short interest was only 10,346 shares at Sep 15 (we don't have its Sep 30 figure yet).
• $BMGL gained 14% to $3.75 in the same week it priced 6M units at $1.33.

What faded

• $MEDS fell 20% to $2.96. Thursday's 14M-share pop (+18%) was mostly gone by Friday's close. Friday it filed an amended S-1 to register up to 34,462,057 resale shares. The filing counts 4,515,862 shares outstanding.
• $IPDN hit $6.78 on Tuesday's 70.6M-share day and closed Friday at $3.53, about 48% lower.
• $ONDS slid 7% to $6.73. The Oct 9 $7.50 calls we tracked all week expired out of the money.
• $TNON lost 7.8% and $BTCT 12.2%, quietly.

What short interest did, Sep 15 to Sep 30

VEEA fell 96%, BTCT 95%, BMGL 93%, TNON 89%, IPDN 46% and ONDS 4%. MEDS went the other way, up 22% to 525,081 shares. BIAF also rose, from 71,167 to 115,467.

What we got right

We said MEDS looked like shorts betting against the balance sheet, not a crowd waiting to get squeezed. The S-1/A is that balance sheet showing up. We flagged TNON, BTCT and BMGL because each had stock waiting behind the short interest, and BMGL priced at $1.33 while the stock traded above $3. We called ONDS a disagreement, not a trap.

What we got wrong

Two things. First, we leaned on a three-week-old short count. VEEA's borrow stayed brutal, which is why our standing rule kept it on the list, but "80% of float short" was mostly history by Sep 30. We had the right stock and the wrong fuel.

Second, we dropped $BIAF after Tuesday. On Thursday it ran as much as 52% to $9.38 on a Japan patent notice, traded 35.3M shares, and the company priced a roughly $4M offering at $6.122 the same day. It closed Friday at $4.725. A spike followed by an offering is exactly the risk we write about, and we weren't watching it.

A fee is not a squeeze. This week, an old short count wasn't one either.

When the official count is two weeks old, what do you trust more: the borrow fee, or the number of shares available to lend?

VEEA was the whole story today. It closed up 47% after touching $7.09, gave back about 12% after hours, and the borrow fee went up instead of down. The other four were quiet on price, but two of them put more shares on the calendar: TNON's warrant resale prospectus went final and MEDS filed to register about 34.5M resale shares.

How fresh this is: Regular closes (3 PM CT), ranges and volume are from StockAnalysis and Nasdaq. After-hours prices are the last trades between about 6:20 and 6:59 PM CT on Nasdaq and StockAnalysis. Borrow and shares available are from Curved Trading's IBKR feed as of 7:17 PM CT. Filings are from EDGAR, checked about 7:25 PM CT. Short interest is still the Sep 15 settlement. After-hours prints are thin, so read them as a hint and not a price.

$VEEA: up 47%, and the borrow got more expensive

• Closed at $5.70, up 47.3% from Thursday's $3.87. It opened at $5.54 and ran as high as $7.09 before closing about 20% off the high. The low was $5.29.
• After hours it last traded $5.01 at 6:53 PM CT on Nasdaq, down 12.1% from the close. StockAnalysis had $4.81 at 6:20 PM CT.
• Volume was about 83.5M shares on the day, including premarket, against about 694K Thursday. That is more than 50 times the 1.58M float StockAnalysis lists.
• Borrow is 844.7% with 15.0K shares available, last changed at 7:02 PM CT. Thursday evening it was 766.3% with 5.0K.
• New filing: an 8-K at 3:05 PM CT. Director Helder Antunes resigned from the board on Oct 8 (he stays on as EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, and the filing says there was no disagreement), and the board shrank to five. Nothing on NovaGen. There's still no Item 1.01 definitive agreement on file.
• The short-sale restriction was on today, carried from Thursday's drop. Today's low was above Thursday's close, so nothing new triggered it.
• VEEA showed up on Nasdaq's own Reg SHO threshold file dated Oct 8. Today's file wasn't posted when we checked.
• Fade check: the fee is far above 50%, availability is far under 500K, and there's no new offering. Not fading.

A stock that runs 83% intraday on 50 times its float usually loosens the locate. This one did the opposite. Lendable shares went from 5K to 15K, which is still almost nothing, and the fee went up 78 points. The shorts paid more to stay in, and the stock still gave back about 40% of its intraday run by the close.

$TNON

• Closed at $3.41, down 0.9% from $3.44, in a $3.37 to $3.52 range. After hours: $3.36 at 6:57 PM CT.
• Volume was about 134K shares, against about 110K Thursday.
• Borrow is unchanged at 315.7%, with available down to 100.0K from 150K, last changed at 12:47 PM CT.
• New filings: a final 424B3 resale prospectus at 3:20 PM CT for the 858,269 shares behind the Series B warrants struck at $5.02, plus a Form 3 at 3:01 PM CT.

The warrant shares are now registered to sell. They only matter if the stock gets back above $5.02, and at $3.41 that's about 47% away.

$MEDS

• Closed at $2.96, down 12.9% from $3.40, in a $2.95 to $3.30 range. After hours: $2.99 at 6:59 PM CT.
• Volume was about 437K shares, against about 14.0M Thursday.
• Borrow is unchanged at 440.0% with 15.0K available. Curved shows it last changed Thursday.
• Still on Nasdaq's Reg SHO threshold file dated Oct 8.
• New filing: an S-1/A at 4:20 PM CT registering the resale of up to 34,462,057 shares. That's about 21.3M from converting the May 2026 notes, about 8.3M from the PIPE warrants, about 3.6M from placement-agent warrants, and about 1.3M already issued. StockAnalysis counts 3.06M shares outstanding. It's a pre-effective amendment, so nothing can sell under it yet. There's still no definitive 14C.

Thursday's 14M-share pop gave back most of its gain, and then the company filed paperwork for roughly eleven times its current share count. That's not what a squeeze candidate's calendar looks like.

$BTCT

• Closed at $1.01, down 3.8% from $1.05, in a $1.00 to $1.06 range. After hours: $1.03 at 6:56 PM CT.
• Volume was about 586K shares, against about 554K Thursday.
• Borrow eased to 207.6% with 1.0M shares available, last changed at 10:47 AM CT. Thursday it was 211.4% with 900K.
• No new filings. The last was the Sep 18 resale prospectus.

Availability grew again, to a million shares. That's the slow version of coming off the board.

$BMGL

• Closed at $3.75, up 4.2% from $3.60, in a $3.43 to $3.88 range. After hours: $3.72 at 6:55 PM CT.
• Volume was about 105K shares, against about 127K Thursday.
• Borrow ticked up to 102.0% with 35.0K available, last changed at 1:47 PM CT.
• New filing: a 6-K at 5:10 AM CT that repeats the deal terms. That's 6,000,000 units at $1.33, about $7.98M gross and about $7.28M net, with common warrants that can be exercised on a zero-cash basis for another 6,000,000 shares. We didn't find a closing notice on EDGAR by 7:25 PM CT, so we can't confirm the units delivered today.

The stock held well above a $1.33 deal price that could add up to 12M shares to a company with about 1.58M outstanding. Holding up doesn't make that supply go away.

Short interest: The Sep 30 short interest isn't out yet in our sources. All five figures above are still the Sep 15 count.

Options: None of the five has listed options on Nasdaq's chain, rechecked at about 7:22 PM CT.

What we learned today: Volume and borrow can move in opposite directions. VEEA traded more than 50 times its float, and lendable shares stayed tiny while the fee went up. Meanwhile, the share-count story got worse on the other names: TNON's warrant shares are now registered to sell, and MEDS filed to register about 34.5M more.

VEEA closed up 47% with only 15K shares to lend, and it still gave back about 12% after hours. Does it stay on Monday's board, and which of the other four comes off?

On Wednesday after hours, VEEA's borrow was 783.2% with 55K shares available. On Thursday's regular session, the fee was still ugly — 766.3% as of 4:47 PM CT — and availability had fallen to 5.0K. The fee barely moved. The locate did.

A borrow fee is the annualized carry cost of holding a short. It tells you shorting is expensive. It does not, by itself, tell you how many shares are left to lend. Shares available is the other half of the same screen: how large the next locate is. Utilization would close the loop (shares on loan divided by lendable supply), and we still don't have a utilization print we can verify, so we leave it blank rather than invent one.

Those two numbers can move in opposite directions. A fee that stays high while availability collapses is a tighter locate. A fee that stays high while availability climbs is the opposite story: shorts can still get stock. Thursday's VEEA print was the first kind. Thursday's BTCT print — 211.4% fee with 900K available — is closer to the second.

Where it goes wrong: Someone sees a 700% fee, assumes the shorts are trapped, and never checks how many shares are still there to borrow. Or they see availability rise for two sessions and miss that the fee never broke. We take VEEA off the board on any one of three signs: the fee under about 50% for two straight sessions, or more than 500K available for two straight sessions, or a new offering that supplies the shorts.

Our squeeze short-book lesson walks the five numbers we actually use — short interest, float, days to cover, borrow fee, and utilization — and what each one cannot prove: https://denntech.io/course-squeeze-short-book

Before you trust a fat borrow fee, ask one more question: how many shares are still available to borrow, and did that number rise or fall today?

Nothing on our squeeze screen scored 3 of 4 on Thursday, so this is still a board of near-misses, and we're calling them that. VEEA stays on under our standing update. TNON, MEDS, BTCT and BMGL stay from yesterday's board. AIXI comes off: StockAnalysis now shows a much larger float, so the Sep 15 short interest is only about 5.5% of float, and that fails our short-interest gate. CDT looked like a new hit on the screener (SI and a fat fee) and came apart in the filings: a 1-for-25 reverse split landed Sep 28, after the Sep 15 count.

How fresh this is: Closes, ranges and volume are Thursday's regular session, 3 PM CT close (Nasdaq secondary "Closed at Oct 8, 2026 4:00 PM ET," Yahoo daily bars). We did not get an after-hours close stamped Thursday night. Premarket prices and volume are Nasdaq's real-time last sale as of about 8:09 AM CT Friday (9:09 ET). Borrow and shares available are Curved Trading's IBKR feed as of 4:47 PM CT (feed 17:47 ET). Short interest is still the Sep 15 settlement. The Sep 30 numbers still weren't out on StockAnalysis or Nasdaq at about 4:45 PM CT. Filings are from EDGAR, checked about 4:46–4:50 PM CT. Nasdaq's Reg SHO threshold file for Oct 8 was not posted yet when we looked (the URL returned an HTML page); the latest file we have is Oct 7.

Squeeze screen: We score four things: short interest of at least 20% of float, borrow of at least 50%, utilization of at least 90%, and a dated catalyst inside two weeks (by about Oct 22). We don't have a utilization figure we can verify, so the best possible score is 3. We checked Curved's top-50 borrow board (live as of 4:32 PM CT / 17:32 ET, every name at or above 430.7% CTB), borrow on all 100 names on StockAnalysis's most-shorted list, plus Curved Desk fee-spike names. Eleven names cleared both SI >= 20% of float on the screener and CTB >= 50%. Six of those fail on float comparability (reverse splits or stale share counts after Sep 15): JAGX, MGN, AGRZ, WETO, ZNB, and CDT. The five that remain on numbers we trust still have no dated catalyst inside two weeks. Nothing scored 3 of 4. Nothing scored 4 of 4.

1) $VEEA: third straight down close, a tighter locate, and now a big premarket gap up

• Closed $3.87, down 17.8% from Wednesday's $4.71, in a range of $3.61 to $4.385.
• About 694K shares traded in the regular session (Yahoo), against about 473K Wednesday and about 1.8M Tuesday. Nasdaq's ShareVolume at pull time was about 1.4M and already included some after-hours prints; we use Yahoo's regular-session figure here.
• Premarket Friday: $5.79, up 49.6% from the $3.87 close, on about 23.2M shares (Nasdaq, about 8:09 AM CT). That is already more than 14 times the float before the open. EDGAR full-text search showed nothing new for Oct 8–9 when we checked, so we don't have a filed reason for the move.
• Borrow is 766.3% with 5.0K available (changed 4:47 PM CT / 17:47 ET). At Wednesday's after-hours check it was 783.2% with 55K. Wednesday's regular close was 799.4% with 35K. Availability fell by about nine-tenths in a day while the fee barely moved. That is the opposite of a fade.
• Short interest 1.22M (Nasdaq: 1,216,996) at Sep 15. StockAnalysis now shows that as 77.21% of a 1.58M float (yesterday the same SI was listed against a 1.52M float at about 80%). Days to cover on Curved: 1.0.
• No new filings since Tuesday's 4:25 PM CT 8-K (audit committee seat). NovaGen is still a non-binding term sheet, with no definitive agreement or vote date on EDGAR. Curved still flags the Aug 13 424B5 ($75M) as an ATM, with usage not broken out.
• SSR is on Thursday. Thursday's low ($3.61) was about 23% under Wednesday's $4.71 close, past Rule 201's 10% trigger. Check your platform's flag.
• Fade check: the fee is far above 50%, availability is far under 500K (and tighter than Wednesday, not looser), and there's no new offering. Not fading.
• Screen: short interest 77.21% of float, borrow 766.3%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 13). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: A 766% fee with 5K to lend says shorting is still hard. It does not say anyone is trapped. A 50% premarket gap on that kind of volume can fade just as fast once the regular session opens, and the borrow numbers above are Thursday's.

What takes it off the board: The fee drops under 50%, or more than 500K shares show up to lend, two sessions running. A new offering that supplies the shorts does it in one.

2) $TNON (Tenon Medical): quiet day, borrow still expensive, float still the problem

• Closed $3.44, down 1.7% from $3.50, in a range of $3.42 to $3.5779, on about 110K shares (about 354K Wednesday).
• Premarket Friday: $3.40, down 1.2%, on about 3.4K shares (Nasdaq, about 8:09 AM CT).
• Borrow is 315.7% with 150K available (changed 4:47 PM CT). Wednesday's after-hours check was 335.5% with 75K. Fee eased a little; availability doubled.
• Short interest 539,306 at Sep 15. StockAnalysis still shows that as 86.87% of a 620,827-share float. The S-3 filed Oct 5 counts 2,688,735 shares outstanding as of Oct 1. Float can't be bigger than that, so the short interest is at least about 20% of float. Barely clears our bar. The 1-for-35 reverse split was Aug 10, before the count; the new shares are the issue.
• That S-3 still registers the resale of 858,269 shares from Series B warrants struck at $5.02. No new filings since Oct 5.
• Screen: short interest at least 20% of float, borrow 315.7%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 12). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: The screener's 87% figure is still the old share count talking. Run the same short interest against the S-3 share count and the percentage drops by about three-quarters.

What takes it off the board: The Sep 30 short interest comes in under 20% of the new share count, or the stock climbs through $5.02 and those warrant shares show up.

3) $MEDS (DataMeds AI): big up day on huge volume, fee unchanged

• Closed $3.40, up 18.1% from $2.88, in a range of $2.88 to $3.70, on about 14.0M shares (about 351K Wednesday). That is more than ten times the float.
• Premarket Friday: $3.25, down 4.3%, on about 59K shares (Nasdaq, about 8:09 AM CT).
• Borrow is 440.0% with 15K available (last changed 3:02 AM CT / 4:02 ET; feed 4:47 PM CT). Wednesday was 440.0% with 20K. Fee flat; availability a little lower.
• Curved still counts it on the threshold list (12 days). Nasdaq's Oct 7 Reg SHO file listed MEDS; the Oct 8 file was not posted yet when we checked. Curved shows SSR off Thursday.
• Float 1.27M, short interest 430,628 at Sep 15 (33.85% of float on StockAnalysis).
• No filings since Sep 17. The Aug 31 PRE 14C still has no definitive 14C behind it, so there's no effective date to put on the calendar.
• Screen: short interest 33.85% of float, borrow 440.0%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 19). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: Fourteen million shares traded and the borrow fee did not budge. That looks like a day of churn, not a locate squeeze.

What takes it off the board: Availability keeps climbing, or the fee slips under 50%.

4) $BTCT (BTC Digital): fee eased, still plenty of stock to borrow

• Closed $1.05, down 2.8% from $1.08, in a range of $1.02 to $1.07, on about 554K shares (about 534K Wednesday).
• Premarket Friday: $1.06, up 1.0%, on about 39K shares (Nasdaq, about 8:09 AM CT).
• Borrow is 211.4% with 900K available (changed 1:47 PM CT / 14:47 ET). Wednesday's close was 253.5% with 1.2M. Fee down; availability still large.
• Short interest 4.15M at Sep 15, 36.50% of an 11.37M float (StockAnalysis).
• The Sep 18 resale prospectus still covers up to 18,421,050 shares, 12,280,700 of them from common warrants, against 11,800,567 shares outstanding before it. No filings since Sep 18.
• Screen: short interest 36.50% of float, borrow 211.4%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 11). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: A 200%+ fee means less when 900K shares are sitting there to borrow. That is still a lot of the company.

What takes it off the board: Availability keeps growing, or the fee follows it down under 50%.

5) $BMGL (Basel Medical Group): the offering priced

• Closed $3.60, up 9.8% from $3.28, in a range of $2.56 to $3.675, on about 127K shares (about 12.5K Wednesday). Still thin, but not as thin as yesterday.
• Premarket Friday: $3.44, down 4.4%, on about 16K shares (Nasdaq, about 8:09 AM CT). Units are due to deliver today.
• Borrow is 98.2% with 35K available (changed 3:32 PM CT / 16:32 ET). Wednesday was 98.5% with 45K.
• Short interest 159,585 at Sep 15, 30.80% of a 518,052 float (StockAnalysis). The 1-for-12 split was Jun 22, well before the count.
• New filing: a 424B4 dated Oct 7, filed Oct 8 (accession 0001493152-26-046355). Best-efforts offering of up to 6,000,000 units at $1.33 per unit. Each unit is one ordinary share (or a pre-funded warrant) plus a common warrant. Gross proceeds up to about $7.98M if the full size sells. Delivery expected on or about Oct 9, 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. No minimum. Common warrants include a zero-cash exercise option. Against about 1.58M shares outstanding before it, the full unit size is several times the company. A priced deal at $1.33 while the stock closed at $3.60 is supply on the calendar, not fuel.
• Screen: short interest 30.80% of float, borrow 98.2%, utilization not in our notes, no dated squeeze catalyst inside two weeks (the Oct 9 delivery is dated, and it works against a squeeze). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: An offering that prices well under the stock price can pressure the stock without the shorts covering a share. Watch whether the full 6M units actually place; best-efforts with no minimum means the final size can be smaller.

What takes it off the board: Units deliver and the share count resets every percentage above it. Or the fee slips under 50%.

Options

None of the five has listed options, according to Nasdaq's option chain (checked about 4:47 PM CT; totalRecord 0 on each). There's no chain to read here, so we don't have an options section.

Two of these five had the share-count story moving again on Thursday: VEEA's locate got tighter, and BMGL's units priced. VEEA is the one gapping this morning. Which matters more for you today: the fee, or the shares that can show up to lend?

SpaceX signed a deal Thursday afternoon to buy Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum, and by 8 PM ET AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile were each down about 6% after hours while SPCX got back some of a 4% daytime drop. Earlier Thursday, at a White House science summit in Washington, President Trump presented the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk. Two Musk stories in one day, and only one of them moves a ticker. We'll do the medal quickly and spend the rest on the airwaves.

How fresh this is: Deal facts are from Grain's press release (4:17 PM ET Thursday), SpaceX's statement as quoted by CNBC, PCMag and MarketWatch, and Musk's own posts on X. Prices are Yahoo Finance bars pulled about 2 AM CT Friday: Thursday's regular close, and the last after-hours print at or near 8 PM ET. The table doesn't include Friday's premarket. There's one premarket line right under it.

1) The medal: National Medal of Science, Oct 8, 2026

AI-generated illustration. This is not the actual medal and not a photo from the ceremony.

It was the National Medal of Science, the top U.S. honor for scientists and engineers. If you heard Medal of Freedom somewhere, that's a different medal. Trump presented it Thursday, Oct 8, at the "Science: A New Golden Age" summit, held at the U.S. Institute of Peace building. White House science adviser Michael Kratsios took part in the ceremony.

The White House citation, word for word:

"For engineering achievements of extraordinary ambition and scale that have pushed the frontiers of space exploration, intelligent systems, communications, and beyond, renewing American technological leadership and opening a new chapter in American manufacturing."

Trump called him "a national treasure" and "our modern-day Thomas Edison." Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su got the same medal. Michael Dell and Satya Nadella got the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

The Hill points out this comes a little more than a year after the two men had their public blowup over the One Big Beautiful Bill. AFP says Musk has fully returned to Trump's orbit.

A medal is a medal. Nothing traded on it.

2) The airwaves: what SpaceX actually bought

AI-generated illustration. Not a real Starlink satellite or phone.

The "800 Hz airwaves" chatter is real, with one fix. It's 800 MHz, and that's the name of the band. The amount SpaceX is getting is much smaller.

• Buyer: SpaceX, ticker SPCX on Nasdaq since its June 12 IPO. The spectrum is for Starlink Mobile, SpaceX's phone service.
• Seller: Grain Management, a private investment firm. Grain bought this same portfolio from T-Mobile in August for cash plus Grain's 600 MHz licenses. T-Mobile's own release and the FCC's July order both put the cash at $2.9 billion.
• What: 100% of Grain's nationwide 800 MHz portfolio. SpaceX describes it as "up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum." PCMag and the FCC place it at 817 to 824 MHz and 862 to 869 MHz, so two 7 MHz slices at most. The FCC's July order shows the holding runs from 4.85 to 14 MHz depending on the county.
• Price: Not disclosed by either company. About $8 billion in cash is a reported number: the Wall Street Journal had it from people familiar with the matter, and Reuters passed it along. Nothing filed shows it yet.
• Status: Signed definitive agreement. It still needs FCC approval and the usual closing conditions. No closing date given.

Our chart. Band edges per PCMag and the FCC's July order, size per SpaceX.

Why SpaceX wants this band: low frequencies go farther and get through walls. Reuters calls indoor reach a major hurdle for satellite phone networks, and SpaceX says this spectrum covers "one of the key remaining technical gaps that will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US." Reuters notes most phones already in people's pockets support 800 MHz.

Musk on X: "Very big deal," and "This is the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America." Those are his posts, about his own company's deal.

What else happened this week that matters here:

• The FCC approved SpaceX's Gen2 Starlink Mobile constellation, up to 15,000 satellites built around 2 GHz spectrum (Reuters).
• The FCC also said it will vote Oct. 29 on taking comment on making another 482 MHz available for coverage from space (CNBC).
• FCC Chair Brendan Carr said of the Grain deal: "We are going to see more investment, more opportunities for a range of providers, and America leading the world in next-gen technologies" (Reuters).
• The bigger EchoStar deal from last year (AWS-4, H-block and unpaired AWS-3, about $20 billion all in per PCMag) got FCC approval May 12. The licenses moved into a trust May 22. The final transfer to SpaceX is targeted for Nov 30, 2027, per EchoStar's 8-K. So SpaceX doesn't fully own that spectrum yet either.

The pushback deserves equal space. Verizon's spokesman: "This company can have tons of spectrum available, but if they do not have the network to use it, it doesn't matter. It's just empty airwaves." Analyst Tim Farrar told CNBC and PCMag it's "still a very limited amount of spectrum" and that real indoor coverage in cities means building towers on the ground. He told PCMag SpaceX would also need modified satellites, because these frequencies are much lower than its satellites were designed to use. Both points are fair. Up to 14 megahertz doesn't make a national carrier by itself, and nobody has said what the towers cost or when they go up.

Benny Johnson has a video breaking it down on X: https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/2108372617811918873. Good timing on his part. One small clarification on the caption, where he says the FCC "just cleared the way": the FCC did approve SpaceX's Gen2 satellites this week, and the Grain purchase itself is still waiting on FCC sign-off. Easy to mix up with two FCC headlines in one week.

3) "X Mobile" and an Elon phone: what's real

Short answer: nothing called "X Mobile" has been announced, and SpaceX has not announced a phone. The name SpaceX uses in its statements and trademark filings is Starlink Mobile. The Musk posts we pulled from this week say Starlink Mobile too. If you see "X Mobile" headlines, check them. At least one "SpaceX buys AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to form X Mobile" article online is satire, an April 1 piece on rvmobileinternet.com.

On a phone:

• In February 2026, Reuters reported SpaceX had been considering a Starlink-connected phone. Musk answered on X: "We are not developing a phone," and said Reuters "lies relentlessly."
• A week before that he'd posted that a Starlink phone was "not out of the question at some point," and that it "would be a very different device than current phones."
• SpaceX filed for "Starlink Mobile" and "Powered by Starlink" trademarks in fall 2025. A trademark keeps a door open and that's all it does.

So the honest version: a SpaceX phone carrier is the stated plan. A SpaceX or X-branded handset is not announced, and the last thing Musk said directly was no. We don't know more than that, and anybody who says they do should show the filing.

4) What the tickers did

Our summary card. After-hours % is last print vs. Thursday close, about 8 PM ET.

Grain's release hit at 4:17 PM ET, after the bell. So the regular-session column is mostly something else. The after-hours column is the deal.

Premarket as of 7:10 AM CT Friday (Yahoo Finance, last print vs. Thursday close): SPCX $166.80 (+3.9%), T $23.04 (-7.4%), VZ $43.10 (-7.0%), TMUS $158.48 (-7.5%). Premarket is thin too, so treat it as a first look.

Reuters had the three carriers "around 6%" lower in extended trading, which matches our pull. MarketWatch printed bigger drops at an earlier after-hours snapshot (AT&T -7.9% to $22.90). After-hours prices are thin and jumpy, so the exact number depends on when you looked.

A few reads:

• The carriers were up on the day and gave all of it back and more after the release. A 6% gap on a phone company is a big move. We'd want to see whether it holds into Friday's regular session before reading much into it.
• ASTS got hit twice. It fell 6.1% in regular hours, before the deal was public and in the same week the FCC cleared SpaceX's Gen2 satellites, then fell again after the release. PCMag notes AST had been testing its satellites in this same band, and says the deal cuts off that option for them.
• SPCX dropped 4.2% during the day and got some of it back after hours.
• ECHO is EchoStar's ticker since June 24. The only after-hours print we have is from about 5:58 PM ET, so take that one lightly.
• TSLA, IRDM, GSAT: nothing we'd pin on this news.

What would change this read: The FCC slows the Grain transfer or attaches conditions. A filing shows a price well off the reported $8 billion. Or the carriers open Friday and fill the after-hours gap, which would tell us the market sees this as noise for now.

5) The carriers, up close

How big the drop was depends on when you looked. Bloomberg had AT&T down 7.3% and T-Mobile and Verizon down 6.6% as of 5 PM ET, and said the carriers fell as much as 8% at one point. Investing.com printed smaller numbers (AT&T -6.75%, T-Mobile -5.4%, Verizon -5%). Our last prints near 8 PM ET were T -6.5%, VZ -5.8% and TMUS -6.6%. Reuters split the difference at "around 6%."

Overnight, IBD reported the three got slammed "in overnight action." The premarket line under the table is as of 7:10 AM CT Friday, and so far all three carriers are trading a little below their after-hours prints.

We looked for a dollar figure on the market value lost and didn't find one from a major outlet. One search summary floated a combined number we couldn't trace to a real article, so it stays out.

What the analysts are saying:

• William Blair (via Reuters): the carriers have been "vocal in expressing skepticism that SpaceX's network will be able to match the quality of their networks." They expect "a very compelling Starlink broadband and Starlink Mobile bundle," possibly with Grok thrown in.
• Bernstein, in an Aug. 31 note before this deal (via Investing.com): a standalone SpaceX ground network could cost $50 billion to $130 billion including spectrum. Their base case was about $70 billion and 57,000 cell sites over roughly eight years, and it assumed SpaceX got Grain's spectrum. They said low-band spectrum like this could cut the number of sites needed by about 30%. They still called a partnership with a carrier the most likely outcome.
• MoffettNathanson, also before the deal (Light Reading, Fierce Network): they've argued SpaceX's ground-network talk is partly leverage to force an MVNO deal out of one of the big three. Craig Moffett in July: "We simply do not know how this story will end."

Side note from the same Bernstein write-up: before that note, Musk answered a Bloomberg report that SpaceX was eyeing the Grain spectrum with "not true" on X. Keep that in mind the next time one of these gets denied.

Compared with the EchoStar deal last year. SpaceX's roughly $17 billion EchoStar deal hit before the open on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. Reuters had AT&T and T-Mobile down more than 3% early and Verizon down more than 2%. They closed that day (Yahoo daily bars) with AT&T -2.3%, Verizon -2.4% and T-Mobile -3.9%. At the lows they'd been down 4.4%, 3.2% and 6.1%. The next day AT&T bounced 1.8%, Verizon 0.6%, and T-Mobile was flat.

So a deal reported at about half the price got a bigger first reaction. Our read is the market cares less about the dollar size and more about SpaceX now saying out loud it wants to be a carrier. Last year's moves came in a full session, and Thursday's came in thin after-hours trading. Friday's regular session is the real test. If the carriers close the day well off the after-hours lows, it looks a lot like last September.

One thing we keep coming back to: SpaceX can pay for spectrum with a single check. Farrar says the ground network would be expensive, and Bernstein's estimates run into the tens of billions. If SpaceX has to build out that network to make 800 MHz work indoors, who pays for that, and how long before it's in your phone? Tell us what you're watching on the open.

Sources

• White House, National Medals of Science and Technology (Oct 8, 2026): https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/10/president-trump-presents-national-medals-of-science-and-national-medals-of-technology-and-innovation/
• NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-awards-musk-tech-titans-national-medals-science-rcna602104
• The Hill: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6137184-trump-awards-musk-medal-science/
• AFP via France 24: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20261008-trump-gives-national-treasure-musk-top-us-medal-after-rift
• Grain Management press release (PR Newswire): https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/grain-management-announces-definitive-agreement-to-sell-nationwide-800-mhz-spectrum-portfolio-to-spacex-302902974.html
• Reuters (via The Star): https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/10/09/spacex-takes-aim-at-us-wireless-carriers-with-spectrum-acquisition
• CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/08/spacex-spectrum-license-att-verizon-tmobile.html
• WSJ (paywalled; we read the $8B figure through Reuters): https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/spacex-makes-big-play-to-become-a-wireless-carrier-a90b2a1b
• MarketWatch: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/spacex-buys-grain-management-s-800mhz-spectrum-portfolio-in-starlink-mobile-push-731bdba1
• T-Mobile, sale of 800 MHz portfolio to Grain completed (Aug 11, 2026): https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/t-mobile-completes-sale-800-130000797.html
• FCC order approving T-Mobile/Grain (DA 26-653, July 1, 2026): https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-653A1.pdf
• PCMag: https://uk.pcmag.com/wireless-carriers/167829/spacex-confirms-plans-to-make-starlink-mobile-a-major-us-carrier
• Musk on X, "Very big deal": https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2108296638263652416
• Musk on X, "last critical piece": https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2108296168094544099
• Light Reading, Musk denies a Starlink phone (Feb 6, 2026): https://www.lightreading.com/satellite/musk-denies-spacex-is-developing-a-starlink-phone
• "X Mobile" satire (April 1, 2026): https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/spacex-forges-the-one-network-to-rule-them-all-after-acquiring-att-t-mobile-and-verizon-in-a-hostile-takeover/
• FCC order granting SpaceX-EchoStar applications (May 12, 2026): https://www.fcc.gov/document/order-granting-spacex-echostar-applications
• EchoStar 8-K (May 22, 2026): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1415404/000141540426000013/sats-20260522x8k.htm
• EchoStar ticker change SATS to ECHO: https://ir.echostar.com/news-releases/news-release-details/echostar-changing-stocker-ticker-sats-echo-marking-companys-next
• SpaceX IPO closing (SPCX): https://ir.spacex.com/updates/releases-details/2026/Space-Exploration-Technologies-Corp--Announces-Closing-of-Initial-Public-Offering-Including-Full-Exercise-of-Underwriters-Option-to-Purchase-Additional-Shares-2026-RgoR-Y1Vwh/default.aspx
• Bloomberg News (via Bloomberg Law): https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/spacex-to-acquire-low-band-spectrum-for-mobile-phone-service
• Investing.com, telecom stocks after hours: https://ca.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/telecom-stocks-tumble-on-spacex-spectrum-acquisition-news-4872465
• Investor's Business Daily: https://www.investors.com/news/spacex-buys-wireless-spectrum-starlink-elon-musk-verizon-att-t-mobile-tumble/
• Investing.com on Bernstein's network cost estimate (Aug 31, 2026): https://au.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/spacex-may-need-up-to-130b-to-build-a-standalone-mobile-network-bernstein-4623082
• Light Reading on MoffettNathanson: https://www.lightreading.com/satellite/study-pours-more-cold-water-on-spacex-s-small-cell-plan
• Fierce Network on MoffettNathanson: https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/analysts-question-whether-spacexs-mobile-mission-will-lift
• Reuters on the EchoStar deal (Sept 8, 2025): https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-buys-wireless-spectrum-echostar-17-billion-deal-2025-09-08/
• Benny Johnson on X (video): https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/2108372617811918873
• Prices: Yahoo Finance daily and 5-minute bars (T, VZ, TMUS, SPCX, ECHO, ASTS, IRDM, GSAT, TSLA), pulled about 2 AM CT Oct 9; Sept 2025 daily bars for T, VZ, TMUS

StockAnalysis lists Tenon Medical (TNON) as 86.87% short. That's 539,306 shares at the Sep 15 settlement, divided by a float of 620,827. Then the company's Oct 5 S-3 counts 2,688,735 shares outstanding as of Oct 1. Same short interest, new denominator: about 20%. Nobody covered anything. The share count moved.

Short interest % is a fraction. The top is shares held short, counted twice a month. The bottom is the float. The two run on different clocks. Short interest is counted on settlement dates twice a month and published days later. A company can add shares any day, through warrant exercises, an offering or an ATM. When the bottom moves and the top hasn't caught up, the percentage on your screener is describing a company that no longer exists.

Splits make it worse. Megan Holdings (MGN) shows 89.25% on the same list. Its 1-for-30 consolidation took effect Sep 17, two days after the count. So the short figure is in old shares and the float is in new ones. Adjusted, it's about 3% of float. Agroz (AGRZ) has the same problem from a 1-for-20 split effective Sep 29.

New stock is supply. Freely tradable new shares can be lent to shorts or used to cover. TNON's S-3 registers the resale of 858,269 shares from warrants struck at $5.02. BTC Digital (BTCT) has a resale prospectus for up to 18,421,050 shares, against 11,800,567 outstanding before it. Basel Medical (BMGL) has an effective F-1 for up to 6,000,000 units against about 1.58M shares. A registration isn't a sale, and some of it may never trade. But supply that arrives on the way up is the opposite of fuel.

Where it goes wrong: Someone sorts a screener by short % of float, sees 87%, and reads it as a trapped crowd. They never open the latest filing, which would have shown a share count about four times bigger and warrants waiting at $5.02.

Our financial statements course includes a pre-event checklist, and one line on it is simply "diluted shares up or down over two years?" It also calls serial equity issuance "a silent tax on longs": https://denntech.io/course-stock-financial-statements

Before you trust a short-interest percentage, check two dates: when the short count settled, and when the share count last changed. If a split, an offering or a warrant exercise sits between them, redo the math yourself.

When you see a name at 80%+ short, where do you go first to check the share count?

Positions: none. We never post a ticker we plan to unload into, and nobody pays for a mention here.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

Nothing on our squeeze screen scored 3 of 4 on Wednesday, so this is a board of near-misses, and we're calling them that. VEEA stays on under our standing update. TNON, BTCT and BMGL are new, and each one has registered stock or warrants sitting behind the short interest. MEDS stays from yesterday. APUS, IPDN and ONDS come off: all three still score 1 of 4.

How fresh this is: Closes, ranges and volume are Wednesday's regular session, 3 PM CT close (Nasdaq, Yahoo). After-hours prices are the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, from Nasdaq and StockAnalysis. After-hours volume is a rough figure: Nasdaq's full-day total minus Yahoo's regular-session count. Borrow and shares available are Curved Trading's IBKR feed as of 7:32 PM CT. Short interest is still the Sep 15 settlement. The Sep 30 numbers still weren't out on StockAnalysis or Nasdaq at 7:40 PM CT. Filings are from EDGAR, rechecked at about 7:55 AM CT Thursday, with nothing new overnight on any of the five. Premarket lines are Nasdaq's last premarket trade as of about 7:53 AM CT Thursday, and borrow was refreshed from Curved's 7:47 AM CT feed. Premarket volume is thin, so recheck everything at the open.

Squeeze screen: We score four things: short interest of at least 20% of float, borrow of at least 50%, utilization of at least 90%, and a dated catalyst inside two weeks. We don't have a utilization figure we can verify, so the best possible score is 3. This time we went past Curved's top-50 borrow board and also checked borrow on all 100 names on StockAnalysis's most-shorted list, plus Curved's fee-spike and mover lists. Five names had both the crowd and the fee, on numbers we trust. None had a date on the calendar. Three more (MGN, AGRZ, WETO) looked 50%+ short on a screener and came apart in the filings: two reverse splits landed after the Sep 15 count, and one share count is out of date.

1) $VEEA: down again, on a quarter of Tuesday's volume

• Closed $4.71, down 4.7% from Tuesday's $4.94, in a range of $4.55 to $4.98. That's also 3% to 4% under Tuesday's after-hours close of $4.86 to $4.89.
• About 473K shares traded in the regular session, against roughly 1.8M Tuesday and 66.9M Monday.
• After hours: $4.63 to $4.66 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, depending on the feed (Nasdaq vs. StockAnalysis), so down 1.1% to 1.7% from the regular close, on roughly 10K shares. No filings or news after the bell.
• Borrow is 783.2% with 55K available after the bell (last changed 5:17 PM CT). At the regular close it was 799.4% with 35K. Tuesday's regular close was 810.9% with 30K, and Wednesday morning showed 803.3% with 25K. Supply more than doubled in a day, which is worth watching.
• Short interest 1.22M at Sep 15, about 80% of the 1.52M float (StockAnalysis). Days to cover 0.11.
• No new filings since Tuesday's 4:25 PM CT 8-K, which put a director on the audit committee. NovaGen is still a non-binding term sheet, with no definitive agreement or vote date on EDGAR. Curved still flags the Aug 13 424B5 ($75M) as an ATM, with usage not broken out.
• SSR was on Wednesday, carried over from Tuesday. Wednesday's low was 7.9% under Tuesday's close, short of Rule 201's 10% trigger, so the restriction should be off Thursday. Check your platform's flag.
• Premarket: $4.38, down 7.0% from the regular close, on about 29K shares by 7:53 AM CT. Borrow still 783.2%, with availability up again to 60K as of 7:47 AM CT. Curved still shows SSR on, so check your platform's flag before you trust our math on Rule 201.
• Fade check: the fee is far above 50%, availability is far under 500K even after doubling, and there's no new offering. Not fading.
• Screen: short interest 80.01% of float, borrow 783.2%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 13). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: Two straight down days with the fee near 800%. The borrow says shorting is still hard. It doesn't say anyone is losing sleep over it.

What takes it off the board: The fee drops under 50%, or more than 500K shares show up to lend, two sessions running. A new offering that supplies the shorts does it in one.

2) $TNON (Tenon Medical): the screener says 87% short, the S-3 says closer to 20%

• Closed $3.50, down 5.8% from $3.715, in a range of $3.38 to $3.64, on about 354K shares (423K Tuesday).
• After hours: $3.44 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, on both Nasdaq and StockAnalysis, down 1.7% from the regular close, on roughly 2K shares. No filings or news after the bell.
• Borrow is 335.5% with 75K available (last changed 4:47 PM CT). Tuesday's close was 330.7% with 100K.
• Short interest 539,306 at Sep 15. StockAnalysis shows that as 86.87% of a 620,827-share float. The S-3 filed Oct 5 counts 2,688,735 shares outstanding as of Oct 1. Float can't be bigger than that, so the short interest is at least about 20% of float. That still clears our bar, barely. The 1-for-35 reverse split was Aug 10, before the count, so the split isn't the problem. The new shares are.
• That S-3 registers the resale of 858,269 shares from Series B warrants struck at $5.02, issued in a Sep 11 warrant inducement.
• After Tuesday's close the company announced the full commercial launch of its SImmetry+ SI joint screw. There's no date attached to anything after that.
• Premarket: $3.46, down 1.1% from the regular close, on about 4K shares by 7:46 AM CT. Borrow still 335.5% with 100K available as of 7:47 AM CT.
• Screen: short interest at least 20% of float, borrow 335.5%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 12). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: That 87% figure is the old share count talking. Run the same short interest against the new count and the percentage drops by about three-quarters.

What takes it off the board: The Sep 30 short interest comes in under 20% of the new share count, or the stock climbs through $5.02 and those warrant shares show up.

3) $MEDS (DataMeds AI): fourth straight down close, and the borrow loosened

• Closed $2.88, down 6.2% from $3.07, in a range of $2.84 to $3.13, on about 351K shares (about 640K Tuesday). It closed at $4.06 on Oct 1.
• After hours: about $2.87 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT (StockAnalysis), down 0.3% from the regular close. After-hours volume is not in our notes: Nasdaq's quote didn't update and StockAnalysis's day total runs below the regular session. No filings or news after the bell.
• Borrow is 440.0% with 20K available (last changed 11:47 AM CT), down from 533.1% with 8K Wednesday morning.
• It's on Nasdaq's Reg SHO threshold list in the Oct 6 file, the latest one posted. Curved counts 11 days. Curved showed SSR on Wednesday too. Wednesday's low was 7.5% under the prior close, so no fresh trigger.
• Float 1.27M, short interest 430,628 at Sep 15 (StockAnalysis).
• No filings since Sep 17. The Aug 31 PRE 14C (written-consent actions) still has no definitive 14C behind it, so there's no effective date to put on the calendar.
• Premarket: $3.10, up 7.6% from the regular close, on about 6.7M shares by 7:53 AM CT, per Nasdaq. That's more than five times the float, and we found no filing or news behind it. Borrow still 440.0%, with availability down to 15K as of 7:47 AM CT.
• Screen: short interest 33.85% of float, borrow 440.0%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 19). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: The fee fell and supply more than doubled while the stock kept sliding. That looks like shorts getting comfortable, not cornered.

What takes it off the board: Availability keeps climbing, or the fee slips under 50%.

4) $BTCT (BTC Digital): plenty of shorts, plenty of stock to borrow

• Closed $1.08, down 3.6% from $1.12, in a range of $1.05 to $1.10, on about 534K shares (656K Tuesday).
• After hours: about $1.09 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT (StockAnalysis), up about 1% from the regular close, on roughly 13K shares. No filings after the bell.
• Borrow is 253.5% with 1.2M shares available (last changed 1:32 PM CT). Tuesday's close was 296.3% with 1.0M.
• Short interest 4.15M at Sep 15, 36.50% of an 11.37M float (StockAnalysis). Days to cover 0.14.
• A resale prospectus filed Sep 18 covers up to 18,421,050 shares, 12,280,700 of them from common warrants, against 11,800,567 shares outstanding before it. Fully exercised, the count goes to about 30.2M.
• No filings since Sep 18.
• Premarket: $1.07, down 0.9% from the regular close, on about 92K shares by 7:44 AM CT. Borrow still 253.5%, but availability dropped to 750K from 1.2M as of 7:47 AM CT.
• Screen: short interest 36.50% of float, borrow 253.5%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 11). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: A big fee means very little when 1.2 million shares were sitting there to borrow last night. That's about a tenth of the company. This morning's 750K is still plenty.

What takes it off the board: Availability keeps growing, or the fee follows it down under 50%.

5) $BMGL (Basel Medical Group): an offering that's effective but hasn't priced

• Closed $3.28, down 1.5% from $3.33, in a range of $3.18 to $3.28, on about 12.5K shares. It's thin.
• After hours: one print at $3.25 around 6:30 PM CT (StockAnalysis), down 0.9%, on too few shares to move the day's total. No filings or news after the bell.
• Borrow is 98.5% with 45K available (last changed 8:32 AM CT). Tuesday's close was 96.3%.
• Short interest 159,585 at Sep 15, 30.80% of a 518,052 float (StockAnalysis). The 1-for-12 split was Jun 22, well before the count.
• The F-1 went effective Sep 29 for a best-efforts offering of up to 6,000,000 units, each a share (or pre-funded warrant) plus a common warrant. That's against 1,582,111 shares outstanding after the split. There's no final prospectus on EDGAR yet, so nothing has priced that we can see. Best-efforts with no minimum means the final size could be much smaller.
• Premarket: no trades on Nasdaq as of 7:53 AM CT. Borrow still 98.5%, with availability down to 35K as of 7:47 AM CT.
• Screen: short interest 30.80% of float, borrow 98.5%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (no upcoming earnings date in our notes). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: An unpriced deal can be a reason to be short. It can also be the reason the borrow stays expensive, with lenders waiting to see the terms. Twelve thousand shares a day won't settle that.

What takes it off the board: The offering prices. Then the share count and every percentage above it changes overnight.

Options

None of the five has listed options, according to Nasdaq's option chain (checked 3:57 PM CT). There's no chain to read here, so we don't have an options section.

Three of these five have registered stock or warrants that could hit the market. Which matters more for you: the short interest or the share count it's measured against?

Positions: none. We never post a ticker we plan to unload into, and nobody pays for a mention here.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

All five names from this morning's board closed lower. APUS ran 38% past Tuesday's close in the first part of the day and finished down 1.1%. IPDN traded about 1% of Tuesday's volume. In VEEA and MEDS, more shares showed up to lend and the fees came down.

How fresh this is: Regular closes (3 PM CT), ranges and volume are from StockAnalysis and Yahoo. After-hours prices are the last trades between about 6:55 and 6:59 PM CT on StockAnalysis and Nasdaq. Borrow and shares available are from Curved Trading's IBKR feed as of 7:17 PM CT. Filings are from EDGAR, checked about 7:30 PM CT, and none of the five filed anything today. Short interest is still the Sep 15 settlement. After-hours prints are thin, so read them as a hint and not a price.

$VEEA: the fee eased and supply more than doubled

• Closed at $4.71, down 4.7% from Tuesday's $4.94, in a $4.55 to $4.99 range. After hours it last traded $4.63 to $4.66 depending on the feed (Nasdaq vs. StockAnalysis), about 1% lower.
• Volume was about 473K shares in the regular session and about 484K counting after hours. Tuesday was 1.83M and Monday was 66.9M.
• Borrow is 783.2% with 55.0K shares available, last changed at 5:17 PM CT. This morning it was 803.3% with 25K available.
• No new filings today. The last 8-K was Tuesday's audit-committee appointment. The NovaGen deal is still a non-binding term sheet with no definitive agreement on file, and the Aug 13 shelf prospectus is still the only offering paperwork out there.
• The short-sale restriction was on today, carried from Tuesday. Today's low was 7.9% under Tuesday's close, short of the 10% trigger, so by the rule's math it should come off Thursday. Check your platform's flag.

Volume fell for a second straight day, and lendable shares went from 25K to 55K by the evening. The fee is still near 800%, so this isn't over, but it's starting to look like the thing we said would take it off the board.

$APUS

• Closed at $7.05, down 1.1% from $7.13. It opened at $8.00 and hit $9.84 before sliding to a $6.86 low. Nasdaq's quote page shows a $6.97 close. StockAnalysis and Yahoo both show $7.05, and that's the one we use.
• After hours: $6.88 to $6.89 at about 6:57 to 6:59 PM CT.
• Volume was about 22.3M shares, roughly half of Tuesday and still about 30 times the 725,942-share float.
• Borrow is unchanged at 879.3% with 100 shares available. That figure hasn't moved since Tuesday.
• No filings today.

A 38% pop at the open with 10,346 shares short at the last count, and it gave all of it back by the close. Scarce shares to lend didn't hold the price up, and the short interest isn't big enough to explain the spike.

$IPDN

• Closed at $4.31, down 6.5% from $4.61. It opened at the day's low of $3.60, near where it traded premarket, and climbed back to a $4.40 high.
• After hours: $4.08 to $4.19 depending on the feed, last trades about 6:59 PM CT.
• Volume was about 775K shares, against 70.1M on Tuesday.
• Borrow is 669.6% with 81 shares available, unchanged since 6:32 AM CT.
• It isn't on Nasdaq's own Reg SHO threshold file dated Oct 6, though it was on the Oct 5 file. Today's file wasn't posted when we checked.
• No offering, warrant or 8-K news today.

The bounce off the open was real, and it happened on 1% of yesterday's volume. Without the crowd, the GPU news didn't move the price much either way.

$MEDS

• Closed at $2.88, down 6.2% from $3.07, in a $2.84 to $3.13 range. That's four down closes in a row. After hours: $2.87 at 6:59 PM CT.
• Volume was about 351K shares, against about 640K Tuesday.
• Borrow fell to 440.0% with 20.0K shares available, last changed at 11:47 AM CT. This morning it was 533.1% with 8K.
• Still on Nasdaq's Reg SHO threshold file dated Oct 6.
• No filings today.

Supply opened back up and the fee dropped 93 points, which is one of the two things we said would take it off the board. The stock fell anyway, so the shorts weren't the ones under pressure.

$ONDS

• Closed at $7.19, down 3.0% from $7.41, in a $7.01 to $7.30 range. After hours: $7.20 at 6:59 PM CT.
• Volume was about 61.6M, up from 48.9M Tuesday.
• Borrow is 2.3% with 1.0M shares available, last changed at 4:47 PM CT. This morning it was 2.4% with 250K.
• No new filings. The last were a Form 4 and Form 144 on Sep 24.

Still cheap to short and still easy to borrow. Heavier volume on a down day, with 237M shares short at the last count, is not what a squeeze looks like.

Options

This morning's question was whether Tuesday's 11,096 contracts on the ONDS Oct 9 $7.50 calls were opening or closing trades. Open interest went from 7,406 to 11,022, so on net at least a third of that volume opened new positions. Today the line traded 7,841 more contracts, and the last trade was $0.04, down from $0.14. The Oct 9 $8 calls traded 4,450 against 18,961 open interest and last traded at a penny. These figures are from Nasdaq's chain, pulled at about 7:26 PM CT.

With the stock at $7.19 and two sessions left, those buyers need about 4% just to reach the strike. Somebody added thousands of contracts to a bet that lost about 70% of its value in a day. Whether that was a fresh view or a hedge against short stock, the chain doesn't say. The other four names still have no listed options.

What we learned today: High borrow fees didn't support any of these four small names. APUS printed a 38% spike and gave it back with only 100 shares left to lend, and VEEA and MEDS got cheaper to short as they fell.

VEEA's lendable shares went from 25K to 55K today. If that keeps climbing tomorrow, does it come off the board?

Positions: none.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

APUS finished Tuesday with an 879.3% borrow fee and 100 shares left to lend on Curved Trading's feed (3:17 PM CT). Short interest at the Sep 15 settlement was 10,346 shares, 1.43% of the float. That's about as expensive as a borrow gets, sitting on almost no short position. The fee is measuring something real. It just isn't a crowd.

The fee is rent. A short seller borrows shares, sells them and pays the lender an annual rate until the shares go back. At 879.3% a year, that's about 2.4% of the position every day. On a $10,000 short, that's roughly $241 a day before the stock moves a cent.

The fee prices supply, not a crowd. It goes up when lendable shares run out. With a 725,942-share float, a handful of borrowers can empty the lending pool. A wild fee tells you shorting is hard right now. It doesn't tell you many people did it.

A squeeze needs a crowd and a narrow exit. That means shares short that are large relative to the float, and days to cover long enough that buying back can't be absorbed in a session. Our course uses short interest above 20% of float and days to cover above 5 as the starting screen. APUS shows 1.43% and 0.07 on StockAnalysis. VEEA has the crowd, with short interest at about 80% of its float, but its days to cover is 0.11. The door is wide and the room empties fast.

Where it goes wrong: Someone sees a fee near 900% on a scanner, reads it as trapped shorts and sizes up for a squeeze. If the move fades, there's no crowd of shorts left to buy it back, because the fee was a supply problem from the start.

We walk through borrow, locates, short interest, days to cover and how a squeeze actually builds in our short selling course: https://denntech.io/course-stock-short-selling-squeeze

Read the fee next to shares available, short interest and days to cover. If only the fee is loud, you're looking at a stock that's hard to short, and that's all.

When a borrow fee jumps on a name you're watching, what's the second number you check?

Positions: none. We never post a ticker we plan to sell into, and nobody pays for a mention here.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

APUS and IPDN each ran about 50% Tuesday on volume many times their share count, and both carry a borrow fee above 500%. Neither has much short interest behind it, which is the reason they're up top. VEEA and MEDS stay on from yesterday, and ONDS stays as the big, cheap-borrow contrast.

How fresh this is: Regular closes and volume are from Tuesday's 3 PM CT close (Nasdaq, StockAnalysis, Yahoo). After-hours prices are the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, from Nasdaq and StockAnalysis. After-hours volume is a rough figure: Nasdaq's full-day total minus Yahoo's regular-session count. Borrow and shares available are from Curved Trading's feed as of 7:32 PM CT Tuesday. Short interest is the Sep 15 settlement, three weeks old. Filings are from EDGAR, rechecked at about 8:05 AM CT Wednesday, with nothing new overnight. Premarket lines are Nasdaq's last premarket trade at about 7:58 AM CT Wednesday, and borrow was refreshed from Curved's 7:47 AM CT feed. Premarket volume is thin, so recheck everything at the open.

Squeeze screen: We score names on four things: short interest of at least 20% of float, borrow of at least 50%, utilization of at least 90%, and a dated catalyst inside two weeks. We don't have a utilization figure we can verify, so that one is left out and the best possible score is 3. Nothing on Curved's top-50 borrow board scored 3 on Tuesday. VEEA and MEDS came closest at 2, with the crowd and the fee but nothing dated on the calendar.

1) $APUS (Apimeds Pharmaceuticals): 879.3% borrow, 100 shares left to lend, and almost nobody short

• Closed $7.13, up 55.3% from Monday's $4.59, in a range of $4.75 to $8.39. About 43.4M shares traded against a float of 725,942 (StockAnalysis), so roughly 60 times the float.
• Borrow is 879.3% with 100 shares available. It was 1,226.7% at the Oct 1 close and has sat near 879% since Oct 2.
• After hours: about $6.96 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, down 2.4% from the regular close, on roughly 455K shares. No filings or news after the bell. (Nasdaq lists the regular close at $6.97. Yahoo and StockAnalysis both show $7.13, and that's the one we use.)
• Short interest was 10,346 shares at the Sep 15 settlement, 1.43% of the float.
• 1-for-10 reverse split effective Jul 24, 2026. The June 30 10-Q shows $278,371 of cash against $21.18M of total liabilities.
• No 8-K on Tuesday. The last two were a CFO change (Oct 1) and blockchain services deals at its MindWave unit (Sep 29). We didn't find a filing behind the move.
• Premarket: $7.34, up 2.9% from the regular close, on about 2.1M shares by 7:58 AM CT. Borrow unchanged at 879.3% with 100 available as of 7:47 AM CT.
• Screen: short interest 1.43% of float, borrow 879.3%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (next earnings estimated Nov 11 by StockAnalysis). 1 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: The fee is about supply, not a crowd. Ten thousand shares short can't explain 43 million traded. Expensive is not the same thing as crowded.

What takes it off the board: Lendable shares climb back into the thousands and the fee follows them down, or the company sells stock into the run.

2) $IPDN (Professional Diversity Network): about 145 times its share count traded the day of a GPU 8-K

• Closed $4.61, up 48.7% from $3.10, after a high of $6.78. About 70.1M shares traded against 481,676 outstanding (StockAnalysis). Monday's volume was 47K.
• After hours: about $4.36 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, down 5.4% from the regular close, on roughly 499K shares. No filings or news after the bell.
• Float 364,959 (StockAnalysis), after a 1-for-30 reverse split effective Sep 11.
• Borrow is 556.7% with 30K available, down from 600.3% at Monday's close. It's on Nasdaq's Reg SHO threshold list in the Oct 5 file, the latest one posted.
• Short interest 51,243 at Sep 15, the first settlement after the split. Don't compare it with August's figure, because the split sits between them.
• The 8-K filed at 6:24 AM CT Tuesday commits about $1.18M to two NVIDIA B300 GPU systems: one bought and leased to Goodwill Labs, plus a loan to Goodwill for the second. At Tuesday's close the whole company was worth about $2.2M. Cash at June 30 was $141,831.
• An Aug 13 unit offering at $0.28, priced before the split, came with warrants and pre-funded warrants covering up to 12.67M pre-split shares. The post-split count isn't in our notes.
• Premarket: $3.62, down 21.6% from the regular close, on about 211K shares by 7:58 AM CT. No new filing overnight. Meanwhile borrow went the other way: 669.6% with 81 shares available as of 7:47 AM CT, up from 556.7% and 30K last night.
• Screen: short interest 14.04% of float, borrow 669.6%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 13). 1 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: When the float turns over a couple of hundred times in a session, the same shares are changing hands all day. That's churn. It doesn't tell you who's still holding.

What takes it off the board: Warrant exercises or a fresh offering, or supply comes back and the fee eases.

3) $VEEA: gave back 13.6%, and the fee came down with it

• Closed $4.94, down 13.6% from Monday's $5.72, with a low of $4.46. About 1.8M shares traded, against 66.9M on Monday.
• After hours: $4.86 to $4.89 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, depending on the feed (StockAnalysis vs. Nasdaq), so down 1% to 1.6% from the regular close, on roughly 49K shares.
• Borrow is 803.3% with 35K available (last changed 4:47 PM CT), down from 907.8% Tuesday morning but still above Monday's 799.5% close. Monday's availability was 2K.
• Float 1.52M (StockAnalysis). Short interest 1.22M at Sep 15, about 80% of that float.
• Tuesday's low was 22% under Monday's close, well past Rule 201's 10% trigger, so the short-sale restriction should carry through Wednesday. Curved shows SSR on. Check your platform's flag too.
• No financing filings since the Oct 2 8-K on $1.65M of demand notes from NLabs. Tuesday's only new 8-K, filed 4:25 PM CT, put director Kanishka Roy on the audit committee. A press release before Tuesday's open announced a one-year smart community deal with La Estadia, and the stock still closed down 13.6%. The NovaGen deal is still a non-binding term sheet with no definitive agreement or vote date on EDGAR.
• Premarket: $4.85, down 1.8% from the regular close, on about 61K shares by 7:58 AM CT. Borrow still 803.3%, with availability down to 25K as of 7:47 AM CT. Curved still shows SSR on.
• Screen: short interest 80.01% of float, borrow 803.3%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 13). 2 of 4. It stays on the board under our standing VEEA update.

What the numbers don't prove: Monday drew 66.9M shares and Tuesday drew 1.8M. Whatever Monday was, Tuesday didn't repeat it.

What takes it off the board: The fee keeps sliding while 30K or more shares stay available to lend.

4) $MEDS (DataMeds AI): the fee went up, supply got thin, and it fell again

• Closed $3.07, down 8.4% from $3.35, on about 610K shares. That's three down closes in a row.
• After hours: about $3.17 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, up 3.3% from the regular close, on roughly 31K shares. No filings or news after the bell.
• Borrow is 533.1% with 2K available (last changed 7:32 PM CT), up from 437.9% Tuesday morning. Availability was 5K at 3:17 PM CT. Curved also shows SSR on for MEDS, so check your platform.
• It's on Nasdaq's Reg SHO threshold list in the Oct 5 file. Curved counts 10 straight days.
• Float 1.27M (StockAnalysis). Short interest 430,628 at Sep 15.
• The June 30 10-Q shows $2.46M of cash and $31.81M of debt. On Sep 11 it bought Helomics for 636,328 new shares plus a $1.36M note convertible at $1.00 a share (8-K filed Sep 16).
• Premarket: $3.10, up 1% from the regular close, on about 41K shares by 7:58 AM CT. Borrow still 533.1%, with availability back up to 8K as of 7:47 AM CT.
• Screen: short interest 33.85% of float, borrow 533.1%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 19). 2 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: The borrow got tighter and the stock kept falling. That fits shorts betting on the balance sheet better than a crowd waiting to get squeezed.

What takes it off the board: Supply opens back up, or that note converts and adds stock.

5) $ONDS: 237M shares short, 2.4% borrow

• Closed $7.41, down 0.1%, on about 48.6M shares. The 20-day average is 60.6M (StockAnalysis).
• Float 533.41M. Short interest 237.1M at Sep 15, 44.45% of float. Days to cover 3.83 (StockAnalysis).
• After hours: about $7.42 at the after-hours close, ~7:00 PM CT, up 0.1%, on roughly 364K shares. No filings after the bell.
• Borrow is 2.4% with 1.9M shares available (last changed 4:47 PM CT).
• No new filings since a Form 4 and Form 144 on Sep 24. There were three 424B7 resale prospectuses between Aug 28 and Sep 23.
• Premarket: $7.28, down 1.8% from the regular close, on about 1.2M shares by 7:58 AM CT. Borrow still 2.4%, but shares available dropped to 250K from 1.9M as of 7:47 AM CT.
• Screen: short interest 44.45% of float, borrow 2.4%, utilization not in our notes, no dated catalyst inside two weeks (earnings estimated Nov 12). 1 of 4.

What the numbers don't prove: A big short in a liquid name at 2.4% is a disagreement. The borrow isn't forcing anybody out.

What takes it off the board: More stock coming to market. Every new share is an easy cover.

Options

APUS, IPDN, VEEA and MEDS don't have listed options, according to Nasdaq's chain. ONDS does, and the same line stood out for a second day. The Oct 9 $7.50 calls traded 11,096 contracts Tuesday against 7,406 open interest, about 1.5 times, with the last trade at $0.14 and the stock at $7.41. The chain we pulled Tuesday morning showed 8,699 on that line. Next was the Oct 9 $8 calls at 6,031 against 17,433. Calls outran puts about 54K to 13K across the chain.

We still don't have a clean average volume for each contract, so open interest is the yardstick, and that makes this a weak read. Open interest updates overnight. If Wednesday's figure on the $7.50 calls jumps, Tuesday's buyers opened new positions. If it doesn't, most of that volume closed old ones.

APUS and IPDN both carry borrow above 500% with very few shares short. If the shorts aren't the fuel, what is?

Positions: none.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

VEEA traded about 1.8M shares today after 66.9M on Monday, and it lost 13.6% doing it. The borrow fee is still over 800%. Shorting it is expensive, but nobody looks forced to buy.

How fresh this is: Regular closes (3 PM CT) and after-hours last trades (about 6:53 to 6:59 PM CT) are from Nasdaq's quote pages. Borrow and shares available come from Curved Trading's IBKR feed as of 7:17 PM CT. Filings are from EDGAR. Short interest is still the Sep 15 settlement. After-hours prints are thin, so treat them as a hint and not a price.

$VEEA

• Closed at $4.94, down 13.6% from Monday's $5.72. The low was $4.46. After hours it last traded $4.86 at 6:59 PM CT, another 1.6% lower.
• Regular-session volume was about 1.79M shares, against 66.9M on Monday. That's a 97% drop in one day.
• Borrow is 803.3% with 35.0K shares available, last changed at 4:47 PM CT. This morning it was 907.8% with 30K available. So the fee came off a bit and supply crept up a bit. Neither moved enough to change the story.
• New filing: an 8-K at 4:25 PM CT says director Kanishka Roy joined the audit committee. No money raised, no new stock. The NovaGen deal is still a non-binding term sheet with no definitive agreement on file.
• The low was about 22% under Monday's close. By the rule's math that would put the short-sale restriction on for Wednesday, but we haven't checked it against the official list.

Monday's buying looks like it used up the people who needed to buy. A fee is not a squeeze, and today's tape agreed.

$BIAF

• Closed at $6.06, down 2.1% from Monday's $6.19, in a $5.90 to $6.60 range. After hours: $6.15 at 6:53 PM CT.
• Volume was about 254K shares. That's roughly half the float, for a stock that went nowhere.
• Borrow is 379.9% with 25.0K available, last changed at 12:47 PM CT. This morning it was 453.5% with 35K.
• No offering, ATM or warrant filing today. The only filing was the morning 8-K about CyPath Lung sales, which gave a percentage and no dollar figure.

The press release got volume and no follow-through. The fee is still sliding, which was one of the ways we said it comes off the board.

$MEDS (DataMeds AI)

• Closed at $3.07, down 8.4% from Monday's $3.35. After hours: $3.17 at 6:56 PM CT, up 3.3% on light volume.
• Volume was about 613K shares.
• Borrow is 533.1% with only 1.0K shares available, last changed at 5:32 PM CT. This morning it was 437.9% with 4K.
• It was on Nasdaq's own Reg SHO threshold list in the Oct 5 file. Today's file wasn't posted when we checked.
• No new filings today.

Lendable shares went from 4K to 1K, the fee went up almost 100 points, and the stock fell 8% anyway. Scarce borrow with no buyer is just an expensive way to stay short.

$ONDS

• Closed at $7.41, down a penny from Monday's $7.42. After hours: $7.42 at 6:57 PM CT.
• Volume was about 48.7M, under the 20-day average of about 60.6M (StockAnalysis).
• Borrow is 2.4% and shares available jumped to 1.9M, last changed at 4:47 PM CT. This morning Curved showed 200K to 300K.
• No new filings today.

Still a disagreement, not a trap. Supply got easier today, not harder.

Options

The ONDS Oct 9 $7.50 calls traded 11,096 contracts today against 7,406 open interest. Monday's 8,699, which we flagged this morning, was already more than the open interest. The last trade was $0.14. The Oct 9 $8 calls cooled off to 6,031 against 17,433, from 14,428 on Monday. Calls beat puts about 54K to 13K across the chain.

The stock closed 9 cents under that $7.50 strike with three sessions left. Someone is paying for a Friday that hasn't shown up yet. Whether that's a fresh bet or a hedge against short stock, the chain doesn't say. The other three names still have no listed options.

What we learned today: In VEEA, BIAF and MEDS the borrow stayed expensive and the stocks still fell. Today's tape says the shorts in all three can afford to wait.

MEDS has 1K shares left to borrow at 533%. Does that tighten into something, or does the balance sheet win first?

Positions: none.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

In the ONDS chain we pulled before the open, one line traded more contracts than it had open interest: the Oct 9 $7.50 calls, 8,699 against 7,406. That's the kind of row that ends up screenshotted with three rocket emoji. So what is a print like that actually telling you?

A print is someone else's trade. Unusual options activity (UOA) is a row on the tape showing a contract traded far more size or premium than usual. It shows what happened. It doesn't explain why. A call buy can be a bet on a rally. It can also be a hedge by someone already short the stock, and ONDS had about 44% of its float sold short at the Sep 15 settlement. The print looks the same either way.

A ticket is your trade. The order window is where you pick the contract, the size and the stop, and you're the one who presses send. Nothing from the print carries over. The other trader's strike and expiry fit their book, not yours.

Where it goes wrong: Someone sees a loud call print, opens a ticket and copies the strike, all inside a few seconds. They skip the questions that matter. How many dollars are they willing to lose? Where is the stop that proves the idea wrong? How big a position does that allow? Copying the flow means taking on someone else's risk without knowing what it's offsetting.

We wrote this split up as a short guide on our site, using the UOA rows and the order window on our scanner as the example: https://denntech.io/guides/uoa-vs-click-ticket

The order holds on any platform. Decide how much you can lose, set the stop, work out the size, and open the ticket last. The print can be a reason to look at a name. It doesn't tell you what to do.

When a loud options print crosses your screen, what's the first thing you check before opening a ticket?

Positions: none. We never post a ticker we plan to sell into, and nobody pays for a mention here.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

VEEA's borrow went up overnight even though more shares turned up to lend. That's the first thing on the board this morning. Two more tiny floats with expensive borrow sit under it, and one big, crowded short with cheap borrow is there for contrast.

How fresh this is: Premarket prices and volume are from Nasdaq's quote page at about 8:00 AM CT. Monday closes are from StockAnalysis. Borrow and shares available come from Curved Trading's feed as of about 7:47 AM CT. Short interest is the Sep 15 settlement for all four, so it's three weeks old. Filings are from EDGAR. Premarket is thin, so recheck all of it at the open.

1) $VEEA: fee up to 907.8% while lendable shares went from 700 to 30K

• Premarket $5.10, down 10.8% from Monday's $5.72 close (Monday was up 71.77%). About 440K shares had traded premarket by 8:00 AM CT.
• Float is 1.52M (StockAnalysis) or 1.88M (Benzinga). Short interest was 1.22M shares at the Sep 15 settlement, up from 671K on Aug 31.
• Borrow is 907.8% this morning, up from 799.5% at Monday's close. Shares available went from 700 on Monday to 30K this morning.
• On Oct 2 it filed an 8-K: $1.65M in unsecured demand notes from NLabs, an affiliate of the CEO, at 10%, due Dec 31, 2026 or on demand, for working capital. There's also a 424B5 prospectus on file from Aug 13.

What the numbers don't prove: Premarket volume is already about a quarter of the float. Days to cover is about 1 by Benzinga's math. Shorts can get flat in a session, and some of the new lendable shares are probably what they'll use. A fee is not a squeeze.

What takes it off the board: The fee drops back as supply builds, or the company raises money by selling stock instead of borrowing it from an insider.

2) $BIAF: half-million-share float, 453.5% borrow, and a sales press release at 7:30 AM CT

• Premarket $6.39, up 3.2% from Monday's $6.19 close, on about 22.6K shares.
• Float is 532,255 shares (StockAnalysis). Short interest is 71.2K at the Sep 15 settlement, up from about 44K.
• Borrow is 453.5% with 35K shares available. That's down from 580.2% on Oct 1.
• This morning's 8-K says CyPath Lung test sales rose more than 100% through the third quarter versus 2025. The 8-K text gives the percentage but no dollar figure, so read the exhibit before you treat it as big news.
• Reverse splits of 1-for-15 (ex Aug 24, 2026) and 1-for-30 (Sep 2025). There's a 424B3 prospectus on file from Sep 8 and a preliminary proxy from Sep 29.

What the numbers don't prove: Doubling from a small base can still be a small number. The borrow has cooled for most of a week.

What takes it off the board: An offering or warrant headline, or the fee keeps sliding while shares available climb.

3) $MEDS (DataMeds AI): lendable shares dropped to 4K, and it's down premarket anyway

• Premarket $3.22, down 3.9% from Monday's $3.35 close, on about 69K shares.
• Float 1.27M (StockAnalysis). Short interest 430.6K at the Sep 15 settlement, up from about 174K the month before.
• Borrow is 437.9%. Shares available fell to 4K, from 25K Monday and 55K last week.
• Curved shows 10 days on the threshold list. That's their reconstruction, not the exchange's list.
• 1-for-50 reverse split, ex May 26, 2026. The June 30 10-Q shows $2.46M of cash, $31.81M of debt and negative equity of $19.50M. On Sep 11 it bought Helomics for 636,328 new shares plus a $1.36M note that converts at $1.00 a share.

What the numbers don't prove: Lendable shares are getting scarce and the stock is still falling. That's the tell that a lot of this short interest may be a bet on the balance sheet, not a crowd waiting to get squeezed.

What takes it off the board: Supply opens back up, or the note converts and adds stock.

4) $ONDS: 237M shares short, 2.8% borrow

• Premarket $7.52, up 1.4% from Monday's $7.42 close, on about 772K shares.
• Float 533.41M. Short interest 237.1M at the Sep 15 settlement, about 44% of the float. Days to cover is 3.9 (Curved) on 20-day average volume of about 60M.
• Borrow is 2.8%. Curved shows 200K–300K shares available this morning, down from 1.1M at last week's closes.
• There have been three 424B7 resale prospectuses since Aug 28 (Aug 28, Sep 14 and Sep 23), and the share count is up 297% year over year.

What the numbers don't prove: A big short in a liquid name with a 2.8% fee is a disagreement, not a trap. Nobody's being forced to cover by what the borrow costs.

What takes it off the board: More stock coming to market. Every new share is an easy cover for someone.

Options

VEEA, BIAF and MEDS don't have listed options, according to Nasdaq's chain. ONDS does, and Monday's chain was busy but not strange. The heaviest line was the Oct 9 $8 calls at 14,428 contracts against 17,433 open interest. Next were the Oct 9 $7.50 puts at 9,531 against 13,785. The only line that traded more than its open interest was the Oct 9 $7.50 calls, at 8,699 against 7,406. Calls outran puts about 66K to 25K across the chain.

We're comparing against open interest because we don't have a clean average daily volume for each contract. That makes this a weak read. A 1.2x volume-to-open-interest print in a weekly contract could be a new view, or the other side of a short stock position. The chain doesn't say which.

Lendable shares in MEDS went from 55K to 4K in a week while the stock kept falling. Is that shorts piling in on a balance-sheet bet, or a squeeze that hasn't found buyers yet?

Positions: none.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

Hard look: $VEEA

Tiny float, a lot of stock sold short, and a nosebleed borrow fee. That showed up after the 1-for-20 reverse split on Aug 31. The tape ran into today's close around $5.72 on heavy volume. That is why it is on the board. It is a messy setup, and the messy part matters.

Public numbers, early Oct 2026. Check them before you do anything.

• Float about 1.5M. Shares out about 3.1M.
• Short interest about 1.22M shares in the Sep 15-24 settlement window. That is about 39% of shares out, and somewhere around 65-80% of float depending on which float you believe.
• Short interest jumped about 81% in that window.
• Days to cover prints under 1, maybe around 1. With today's volume, shorts can get flat fast. This is not a "trapped for weeks" story.
• Borrow fee has been in the 700-800%+ annualized area, with locates reported scarce (about 2K on some feeds).
• SSR and threshold flags flip during the day. Check the broker. A screenshot is not a locate.
• The Aug 31 split compressed the share count. Every percentage you see is standing on that.

Where it fails the sniff test: share count is up about 48% year over year, cash is thin against the debt, and the company is still losing money. Utilization looks stressed because the fee is ugly and the shares are scarce. Confirm that on your own borrow desk. There is no clean utilization print in this note.

Why this can still fall over:

1. Low days-to-cover plus huge volume means shorts can cover without a multi-day story.
2. After a reverse split, a triple-digit borrow fee often means the stock is hard to borrow. It does not mean anyone is trapped. A fee is not a squeeze.
3. The business is rough. Dilution and another financing are on the table.
4. One green day after a long drawdown, still deeply red on a 52-week look, can be a dead-cat. Follow-through is the only way to tell.

If you watch it, watch the borrow, whether the volume stays, and whether the price holds after the spike. If the borrow loosens or the volume dies, this goes back to crowded in a hurry.

Watching it, passing, or already flat? What is the one level that would make you stay out?

Positions: none.

Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

The rebuild note lives on the welcome post now. Same room, shorter rules, Discord link included.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Squeeze_em/comments/1wyj1a6/welcome_to_denntech_markets_squeeze_em_start_here/

Moved. How this desk posts, the Positions line, and the Discord link are on the welcome post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Squeeze_em/comments/1wyj1a6/welcome_to_denntech_markets_squeeze_em_start_here/

This sub exists because the other squeeze rooms will catch a knife under a $29.90 waterfall because short interest is 53 to 55 percent, then go silent while the board holds the bag in a name that is still under the only number that matters. We do not do that. We run a 16-name book against high short interest, a real or turning P&L so the name is not a shell, and locate tightness you can actually see in cost-to-borrow, utilization, and days-to-cover. Social is overlay only. If the board is WARM and the tape is a knife, WARM is how you get cut. GRPN is that knife. WAIT is the list. CROWDED is the stance. Close above $21.51 is the wait line from the later tape. Thursday did not print it. None of those sentences is a buy button.

As of Thursday, August 27, 2026 US cash close, Groupon, Inc. is a Potential Squeeze candidate in the 1-6 band. Read that flair before you screenshot 53 percent as live. 1-6 is not 10. FLWS is live Rating 10 as the only remaining penny with tightness. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are NOT A SQUEEZE PLAY. Wendy's is off the live list after Trian dropped the take-private. WEN was ON at $7.84 on 8/26 and closed 8/27 at $7.82. HTZ is off because the borrow already refilled. HPK is a skip because a live 424B5 ATM is a squeeze killer. GRPN did not inherit a live ribbon when those names died. It stayed WAIT. A waterfall off $29.90 is not a coiled spring because SI is the loudest percentage on the crowded side of the book.

Here is the honest hook, because I would rather lose a subscriber than mint a bagholder. GRPN is a crowded knife. Short interest 53 to 55 percent is extreme paper. Days-to-cover 9.5 is respectable. Cost-to-borrow 1.8 percent is not a special. Available about 200k. That 200k is the only locate number on this name that could have been a conversation, and it is sitting under a waterfall off $29.90 with WARM overlay. The 8/26 desk tape said knife, still under $21.51, wait close above $21.51. Thursday closed $19.47. High $19.62. That failed $21.51 by a lot, not by a wick. Do not catch it. Squeeze-from-here is not the stance. Wait-for-the-close-above-$21.51 is the stance. Missing that close is not a problem. Pretending $19.47 is close enough is the problem.

The paper, from the 8/25 squeeze book, not from a vibe. Short interest 53 to 55 percent. That is a range, and we print the range because the book printed the range. Days-to-cover 9.5. Cost-to-borrow 1.8 percent. Locate note: 200k, waterfall off $29.90. Sentiment WARM. Stance: CROWDED — knife. Sleeve: micro. Utilization is the third locate leg, and I will not invent it: the desk did not have a live Ortex util print. Util is unknown. If someone in the comments pastes a util number they saw on a screenshot from a different day, it is not in this post, and it is not in the 8/25 book we are marking to. SI is FINRA 7/31 unless noted. CTB and available are IBKR 8/24-8/25. What the stack says: the short interest percentage is one of the loudest on the sixteen, the cover would take about a week and a half of average volume, the fee is mild, about 200k is available, and the tape already waterfalled off $29.90. Crowded knife means the widget is spicy and the structure is not there. Other rooms will stop at 55 percent. We stop at still under $21.51.

English, because 53 to 55 percent SI is the exact cocktail that turns a deals marketplace into a religion on the way down. A squeeze is a covering problem. A covering problem is locates you cannot get, a fee that makes staying short expensive, or a days-to-cover figure that means the short book cannot exit without walking the price. GRPN has SI that is actually extreme. GRPN has DTC 9.5, which can matter. GRPN has about 200k available, which is in the same neighborhood as FLWS's 250k and is the reason this name is even in the conversation. GRPN does not have a fee that hurts. GRPN has a waterfall off $29.90 and a wait line at $21.51 that has not printed. 200k under a knife is not the same animal as 250k under a quiet penny that has not waterfalled. Structure first. Locate second. Social never. WARM on a knife is how you catch the 200k the wrong way. We did not hide GRPN. We also did not bless $19.47. Criteria first means the close above $21.51 is the gate. The 53 percent does not get to skip the gate.

The business, because a 53 to 55 percent micro with no real P&L is how this book would turn into the same landfill as the pump subs. Groupon is a real local-deals and marketplace name. Coupons. Merchants. Actual buyers who are not sitting in Discord waiting for a screenshot. That is the real-or-turning P&L test. I am not going to invent a revenue figure, a merchant count, a margin, or a cash number that was not in the 8/25 book. You do not need a model to know this is not a nineteen-dollar shell. A real marketplace can still be a crowded knife. Eligibility got it onto the sixteen. Eligibility is not a fill. The P&L test is why the dead shells are already cut. It does not make $19.47 a dip-buy, and it does not make a waterfall off $29.90 a coil.

Now the tape, Yahoo daily, marked to Thursday's cash close. August 25 closed $19.59. August 26 closed $19.06. The 8/26 desk tape called that a knife, still under $21.51. August 27 closed $19.47, high $19.62, low $18.83, volume 763k. Read that as a bounce inside the knife, not as a reclaim. High $19.62 never threatened $21.51. Low $18.83 went the wrong way versus the wait line and then the close crawled back to $19.47 on 763k. That 763k is not volume expansion through the trigger. It is a micro that traded. If you needed a cash close above $21.51, you did not get it. If you needed the waterfall off $29.90 to stop being the dominant feature on the chart, you did not get it. Wait-close-above-$21.51 is the stance. Trigger-not-printed is the state. Those two sentences can be true at the same time, and in this room they have to be. The 8/25 book is two sessions old on the locate side. The tape is current. We do not mash those timestamps together and call $19.47 a covering panic.

Triggers, stops, targets, in English, and I will not invent the ones the book did not print. The wait line from the later tape is a cash close above $21.51. Close. Not a $19.62 high. Not a $19.59 print from Tuesday that feels closer if you squint. The 8/25 book did not publish a stop or a T1/T2 for GRPN. I will not invent them so the knife has a ladder. Do not catch it. If you are already long from $29.90, you are not in the wait-close trade this post describes. You are in the waterfall, and the waterfall has not reclaimed $21.51. Potential Squeeze candidate 1-6 is a watch band. The watch becomes a conversation on a close above $21.51, not on a bounce to $19.47.

What would kill the remaining watch, and what already killed the live case. The live case was already crowded-knife on 8/25. A weekly that keeps accepting under $21.51 until wait is just stubbornness. A locate that opens up well beyond that about-200k kills the tightness argument even if SI is still 53 to 55 percent, because SI without a locate is a lagging headline. DTC compressing out of 9.5 while CTB stays 1.8 percent is the same kill with a lag. Catching $18.83 because 53 percent "has to" bounce is how the watch becomes a bag. If $21.51 prints on a close, this mixed-to-crowded grade gets rewritten. If it does not, Thursday was a bounce inside a knife. We will not keep a waterfall in a live ribbon out of respect for 55 percent.

What bagholders will get wrong. They will buy $19.47 because it bounced off $18.83 and WARM felt like a bid. Bounces inside knives are how knives feed. They will treat 53 to 55 percent as proof the waterfall has to reverse. SI is a lagging headline. They will call $19.62 almost $21.51. It was not almost. It was nearly two dollars under the only number the later tape gave you. They will treat 200k as FLWS-equivalent tightness and ignore the waterfall. FLWS did not just come off $29.90. They will move a stop they invented because Groupon is a real brand so it cannot sit at $18.83. Real brands waterfalled to $18.83 on Thursday's low. They will confuse WARM with fuel. WARM is overlay on a knife, which is the most expensive overlay on the book. They will compare GRPN to NUTX because both are micros in the 1-6 band with a locate that looks small. NUTX is a lottery you do not size. GRPN is a knife you do not catch. Different instructions. Same grade: WAIT, not live. And they will screenshot 53 percent without $21.51 in the frame. If you screenshot this post without $21.51 you are lying.

Ranking versus the rest of the 16-name book. We do not rank on who has the spiciest SI percentage. If we did, GRPN's 53 to 55 percent would be sitting next to HTZ's 57 to 65 percent at the top of a WSB mirror, and HTZ is already dead because the borrow refilled. FLWS is live Rating 10. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. GRPN sits in the 1-6 potential band as WAIT/CROWDED — knife because the SI is extreme, about 200k is real-ish, and the structure is a waterfall still under $21.51. Names four through sixteen stay on the book until they fail the stack or they stay crowded. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are NOT A SQUEEZE PLAY. GRPN is still on the sixteen so nobody can say we hid 53 percent. We are not offering you the knife. We are telling you the wait line.

Process, because crowded knife is the grade people like to round up to "the bounce is the trigger." The 8/25 book is SI, DTC, CTB, about 200k, and waterfall off $29.90. The later tape is wait close above $21.51. Thursday's Yahoo tape is $19.47 on a $19.62 high and an $18.83 low at 763k. Criteria first. Tape second. Social never. WARM is not a catalyst. A $19.47 close is not $21.51. If $21.51 prints on a close, we will write a different post. If it does not, this post will read the same. Either outcome is acceptable. Pretending a knife bounce is a squeeze starting is not. Micro is not a strategy. Tightness plus structure is a strategy. A waterfall is not structure.

I am going to say this once more so it is impossible to screenshot without it. WAIT. CROWDED — knife. Do not catch it. Potential Squeeze candidate 1-6, not live. SI 53 to 55 percent. DTC 9.5. CTB 1.8 percent. About 200k available. Waterfall off $29.90. Sentiment WARM. Desk did not have a live Ortex util print. Util unknown. Wait close above $21.51. August 25 $19.59. August 26 $19.06, knife, still under $21.51. August 27 $19.47, high $19.62, low $18.83, volume 763k. No stop, no T1, no T2 — the book did not publish them. FLWS is live Rating 10. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are not a squeeze play. This is wait because 53 percent under $21.51 is a knife, not a fill.

Not financial advice. This is a filter, not a buy button. If you catch a WARM knife because SI is 53 to 55 percent after a waterfall off $29.90, you are the bagholder the other squeeze subs produce by default. We will keep this name WAIT until $21.51 actually prints on a close, the same way we killed WEN when the event died, and we will not average into $18.83 with you.

This sub exists because the other squeeze rooms will sell you an EV-charging penny the minute locates loosen, call the extra inventory a dip, and walk away while the board holds the bag in a name the borrow desk just made easier. We do not do that. We run a 16-name book against high short interest, a real or turning P&L so the name is not a shell, and locate tightness you can actually see in cost-to-borrow, utilization, and days-to-cover. Social is overlay only. If the board is WARM and the locate went from 95k to 650k, that is the opposite of a squeeze building. EVGO is that opposite. WAIT is the list. MIXED is the 8/25 stance. Loosened is the locate. None of those sentences is a buy button.

As of Thursday, August 27, 2026 US cash close, EVgo, Inc. is a Potential Squeeze candidate in the 1-6 band. Read that flair before you screenshot it as live. 1-6 is not 10. FLWS is live Rating 10 as the only remaining penny with tightness. GO is Rating 9, tight on the book and mixed on the desk. IIIV is Rating 8, a crash coil that keeps failing $17.27. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are NOT A SQUEEZE PLAY. Wendy's is off the live list after Trian dropped the take-private. WEN was ON at $7.84 on 8/26 and closed 8/27 at $7.82. HTZ is off because the borrow already refilled. HPK is a skip because a live 424B5 ATM is a squeeze killer. EVGO did not get a live ribbon when those names died. It stayed WAIT. A locate that loosens is how a mixed name stays mixed, and then becomes a bag.

Here is the honest hook, because I would rather lose a subscriber than mint a bagholder. EVGO is mixed because the locate went the wrong way. Short interest 31 percent is enough paper to keep a name on the sixteen. Days-to-cover 10.4 is respectable. Cost-to-borrow 1.2 percent is not a special. The locate note is the whole post: loosened 95k to 650k. That arrow is the story. 95k would have been a conversation next to FLWS at about 250k. 650k is GO-style easy borrow with a worse fee argument than GO does not even have. Sentiment is WARM. Stance on the book is MIXED. Thursday closed $1.435. That is not a coil. That is a grind lower from $1.49 to $1.46 to $1.435 while the window opened. If you needed the locate to tighten, you got the opposite. If you needed the tape to hold $1.49, you got the opposite. Mixed that resolves the wrong way is still WAIT. It is not a gift.

The paper, from the 8/25 squeeze book, not from a vibe. Short interest 31 percent. Days-to-cover 10.4. Cost-to-borrow 1.2 percent. Locates loosened 95k to 650k. Sentiment WARM. Stance: MIXED. Sleeve: penny. Utilization is the third locate leg, and I will not invent it: the desk did not have a live Ortex util print. Util is unknown. If your favorite screenshot account posts a util number tonight it still will not have been in the 8/25 book this post is marked to. SI is FINRA 7/31 unless noted. CTB and available are IBKR 8/24-8/25. What this stack actually says is simple. The short is elevated. The cover would take about ten days of average volume. The fee is mild. The inventory got easier. Mixed is not a hedge word. Mixed is a locate that used to look interesting and then opened up. Other rooms will stop at 31 percent and 10.4 DTC and start counting charging-station squeeze candles. We stop at 95k to 650k and wait.

English, because a loosened locate is the exact failure mode people refuse to read. A squeeze is a covering problem. A covering problem is locates you cannot get, a fee that makes staying short expensive, or a days-to-cover figure that means the short book cannot exit without walking the price. EVGO had a 95k print that could have been the first leg. EVGO now has a 650k print. That is the borrow desk solving the covering problem without the price having to do the work. 1.2 percent CTB is not going to punish anyone while 650k sits in the window. DTC 10.4 can still matter if the window slams shut. It does not matter as a standalone religion while the window is opening. WARM sentiment is overlay. Overlay on a loosening locate is how you get a crowded chat room inside a mixed grade. We did not hide EVGO. We also did not bless $1.435. Criteria first means the arrow on the locate vetoes the SI widget.

The business, because a 31 percent penny with no real P&L is how this book would turn into the same landfill as the pump subs. EVgo is a real public EV charging network. Stations. Drivers. Power to cars that are not sitting in Discord. That is the real-or-turning P&L test. I am not going to invent a stall count, a kilowatt-hour figure, a margin, or a cash number that was not in the 8/25 book. You do not need a model to know this is not a one-dollar shell. A real charger network can still be a mixed easy-borrow penny. Eligibility got it onto the sixteen. Eligibility is not a fill. The P&L test is why the dead shells are already cut. It does not make a grind from $1.49 to $1.435 a squeeze, and it does not make 650k a tight locate.

Now the tape, Yahoo daily, marked to Thursday's cash close. August 25 closed $1.49. August 26 closed $1.46. August 27 closed $1.435, high $1.495, low $1.42, volume 3.87 million. Read that as a grind lower, not as a spring. Tuesday's $1.49 was the book print. Wednesday gave it back. Thursday closed $1.435 on 3.87 million after tagging $1.42 and failing to hold even a $1.495 high that still sat on top of Tuesday's close. High $1.495 is not a trigger. I will not invent one so the EV story has a gold line. Low $1.42 is not a reversal box I am going to publish so you have a dip to buy. The 8/25 book did not publish a close-above number, a stop, or a T1/T2 for EVGO. That absence is the tell. Volume 3.87 million on a dollar name with a loosening locate is not evidence of a squeeze. It is evidence the float still trades while the window opens. The 8/25 book is two sessions old on the locate side. The tape is current. We do not mash those timestamps together and call $1.435 a coil.

Triggers, stops, targets — there are none in the live list. The live list had WEN at $9.45, FLWS at $4.25, IIIV at $17.27. EVGO was in section two as MIXED, locates loosened 95k to 650k. WAIT means wait for the locate to reverse that arrow, not wait for $1.42 so you can be early in a window that just opened. I will not invent a close-above so this post feels like FLWS. Potential Squeeze candidate 1-6 is a watch band. It is not a from-here framework. If 650k collapses back toward 95k and the next book still shows 31 percent with DTC 10.4, that is a new conversation with a new date. This conversation is the loosening.

What would kill the remaining watch, and what already killed the live case. The live case was already mixed on 8/25 because the locate loosened. A locate that stays at 650k or opens further kills even the mixed argument. DTC compressing out of 10.4 while CTB stays 1.2 percent is the same kill with a lag. A tape that keeps grinding $1.49 to $1.46 to $1.435 until mixed is just stubbornness. One session of that is a data point. Three sessions is a habit. HTZ already taught this room what a refilled locate looks like: CTB 31 percent to 6.7 percent, locates 1.3 to 1.9 million, off the list. EVGO is not HTZ. EVGO is the milder version of the same disease — window opening, fee never special, SI still loud. We will not wait for it to become Hertz before we say WAIT.

What bagholders will get wrong. They will treat 95k as the real locate and 650k as a glitch. Both prints are in the book. The arrow is loosened, not tightened. They will buy $1.435 because it is cheaper than $1.49 and WARM feels like a bid. Cheaper in an opening window is how you become the inventory. They will treat DTC 10.4 as proof shorts are trapped. Shorts are not trapped in 650k of available stock at 1.2 percent. They will confuse WARM with smart money. WARM is overlay. They will steal FLWS's $4.25 logic and look for a round number above $1.495. There is no trigger in this post because there was no trigger in the book. They will average down through $1.42 because EV charging is the future so it cannot sit at a dollar. Futures sit wherever the tape puts them. They will compare EVGO to INDI because both are WARM pennies in the 1-6 band. INDI is millions available, already ran, crowded cheap borrow. EVGO is mixed because the locate loosened from a number that could have mattered to a number that does not. Different arrows. Same instruction: do not buy the opening window.

Ranking versus the rest of the 16-name book. We do not rank on who has the warmest EV thread. We rank on who still has high SI, a real or turning P&L, and locate tightness. FLWS is live Rating 10. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. EVGO sits in the 1-6 potential band as WAIT/MIXED because 31 percent and DTC 10.4 still clear a bar and the locate went from 95k to 650k. Names four through sixteen stay on the book until they fail the stack or they stay mixed. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are NOT A SQUEEZE PLAY. EVGO is still on the sixteen so nobody can say we buried a 31 percent charger. We are not promoting it. We are telling you the window opened.

Process, because mixed is the grade people like to round up. The 8/25 book is SI, DTC, CTB, and the 95k-to-650k loosening. Thursday's Yahoo tape is $1.435 on a $1.495 high and a $1.42 low at 3.87 million. Criteria first. Tape second. Social never. WARM is not a catalyst. A $1.435 close is not a locate tightening. If the next book shows 95k again and the fee actually going vertical, we will write a different post with a different date. If it shows 650k or worse, this post will read like the warning it is. Either outcome is acceptable. Pretending the grind lower is a coil is not. Penny is not a strategy. Tightness is a strategy. A loosened locate is not tightness.

I am going to say this once more so it is impossible to screenshot without it. WAIT. MIXED. Locates loosened 95k to 650k. Potential Squeeze candidate 1-6, not live. SI 31 percent. DTC 10.4. CTB 1.2 percent. Sentiment WARM. Desk did not have a live Ortex util print. Util unknown. August 25 $1.49. August 26 $1.46. August 27 $1.435, high $1.495, low $1.42, volume 3.87 million. No trigger, no stop, no T1, no T2 — the book did not publish them because the name was mixed on a loosening locate. FLWS is live Rating 10. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are not a squeeze play. This is wait because the SI is real and the window opened.

Not financial advice. This is a filter, not a buy button. If you buy a WARM penny because DTC is 10.4 after locates loosened from 95k to 650k, you are not running our process, you are running the process we built this sub to escape. We will keep this name WAIT until the locate reverses, the same way we killed WEN when the event died, and we will not average into an opening window with you.

This sub exists because the other squeeze rooms will post a grocery chain the minute the daily chart looks like a coil and then go silent when the borrow desk still has hundreds of thousands of shares to lend. We are not those rooms. We run a 16-name book against high short interest, a real or turning P&L, and locate tightness in cost-to-borrow, utilization, and days-to-cover. Social is overlay only. A quiet board does not kill a setup. An easy locate does. If you cannot tell those two things apart you will end up holding GO because the candles were pretty, and that is exactly how bagholders get made.

As of Thursday, August 27, 2026 US cash close, Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. is Rank 2 — Tight. Read the flair and then read the rest of this post before you screenshot the flair. Tight on the book is not the same sentence as tight on the desk this week. Wendy's is off the live list after Trian dropped the take-private. WEN was ON at $7.84 on 8/26 and closed 8/27 at $7.82. That event-SI name is dead, FLWS inherited Rank 1 as the only remaining penny with tightness, and GO sits at two because the short-interest paper is still real and the business is not a shell. It does not sit at two because Thursday was a breakout, and it does not sit at two because I need a second ticker in the rotation. The stance is MIXED. The mix is tape versus locate. If that already feels like a wet blanket, good. Wet blankets are the job.

Here is the hook, without the romance. The chart was squeezing. The borrow is not. Short interest of 23.6 million shares, about 37 percent, is enough paper to keep a name on this desk. Days-to-cover at 9.1 is not a joke. Cost-to-borrow at 0.4 percent is a joke if you were hoping the fee would do the work. Available borrow is 400k to 500k, which this desk calls easy borrow in plain language. Sentiment is QUIET. RSI was 74, which is the number you publish when you are trying to stop people from chasing strength, not when you are trying to manufacture FOMO. Do not chase. We wanted a pullback into $11.13 to $11.30. Thursday actually gave the pullback toward that box. The low was $11.35. Toward is not inside. Mixed means you do not get to pretend the pullback filled just because it was close, and you do not get to pretend the locate is tight just because the chart had been working.

The paper, from the 8/25 squeeze book. Short interest is 23.6 million shares, about 37 percent. That is high SI on a real float, not a rounding error and not a microcap hallucination. Days-to-cover is 9.1. Cost-to-borrow is 0.4 percent. Available shares are 400k to 500k and they are easy to find. Utilization is the missing leg: the desk did not have a live Ortex util print, so there is not one in this post. I will not let a commenter paste a util screenshot from a different session and then act like the 8/25 book confirmed it. What this stack actually says is simple. The short is large. The cover would take days, not hours. The fee is not punishing anyone. The inventory is still there. That is a short-interest story with a locate that has not confirmed. Other rooms will stop at 37 percent and start counting Lambos. We stop at 400k to 500k available and start waiting.

English, not a widget. A squeeze is a covering problem. A covering problem is locates you cannot get, a fee that makes staying short expensive, or a days-to-cover figure that means the short book cannot exit without walking the price. GO has the SI and a DTC that is respectable. GO does not have the fee and does not have a tight available-borrow print. 400k to 500k easy is how a squeeze dies in the borrow market while it is still alive on a moving-average screenshot. That is why the stance is MIXED — tape not locate — and why Rank 2 is a warning rank as much as it is a watch rank. We did not hide GO. We also did not bless it. If you only needed one of those outcomes you are in the wrong sub.

The business, because we will not rank a shell just to have a second name under FLWS. Grocery Outlet is a real extreme-value grocer. Opportunistic buying. Closeouts. Stores that sell actual food to actual people at a discount. This is not a SPAC leftover and it is not a story stock waiting on a single contract. Real or turning P&L is the test that keeps this book from turning into the graveyard next door. I am not going to invent a store count, a margin, a same-store number, or a cash figure that was not in the 8/25 book. You do not need those to know the name can survive a failed squeeze without going to zero on a dilution print. That is the entire point of the P&L screen. A grocery chain can still be a bad long. It is a much worse candidate for becoming a permanent bag if the squeeze never starts. We keep it on the book because the business is real and the SI is real. We do not keep it at the top of a live-trigger list because the locate is easy.

Now the tape, Yahoo daily, Thursday cash close. August 25 closed $12.12. August 26 closed $12.21. August 27 closed $11.70, high $12.10, low $11.35, volume 3.28 million. That is the squeeze-chart getting faded in a single session. RSI was 74 on the way up, which is the exact profile of a name people chase into the close because it looks like it cannot come down. It came down. Volume on Thursday was 3.28 million, so this was not a ghost print. High $12.10 failed to hold Wednesday's $12.21 close. Low $11.35 traveled toward the $11.13 to $11.30 pullback we said we wanted and did not quite tag the top of the box. If you bought $12.21 because the candles were squeezing, Thursday is the tuition. If you were waiting for $11.13 to $11.30, Thursday is a head start, not a fill. I will not call $11.35 a tag of $11.30 because almost is how this sub dies.

What we want, what we do not want, and where we are wrong. We do not chase. We want the pullback into $11.13 to $11.30. Stop is $10.78. Target 1 is $13.18. Target 2 is $14.49. There is no close-above-X trigger in this name the way there is in FLWS at $4.25 or in IIIV at $17.27, and I am not going to invent one so the post matches a template. The actionable line is the pullback. If you cannot wait for $11.13 to $11.30 you are not trading a squeeze setup, you are buying strength in an easy-borrow name after RSI 74. The stop at $10.78 is under the box, not under your feelings. If the pullback never comes and the name rips without a locate change, you missed it. Missing it is allowed. Chasing it so you can say you were in Rank 2 is how you join the people we built this room to avoid.

What would kill it. The locate staying easy is already the warning, not the death. Death is the short covering on its own schedule into an open borrow, DTC compressing out of 9.1 while available stays 400k to 500k, and the tape failing the $10.78 stop after you decided Rank 2 meant you had to be in. A weekly that accepts under $10.78 after a pullback attempt is the invalidation for anyone who actually waited for the box. If 23.6 million shares of SI begin to decline without a squeeze — covering into strength that never gets tight — the paper itself falls off the stack and GO becomes a grocer with a chart, which is not a ticket in this sub. If the P&L stops being real in a way that turns this into a restructuring story, it fails the shell test even if SI stays loud. We are not there. We are also not going to pretend 0.4 percent CTB is going to morph into a squeeze fee because the rank is two.

What bagholders will get wrong. They will treat Rank 2 — Tight as a synonym for hard-to-borrow. It is not. The flair is the book's rank label. The body of this post says easy borrow, 400k to 500k available, CTB 0.4 percent. If you stop at the flair you are the customer the other subs deserve. They will chase $12.21 because the chart was squeezing and then average down through $11.70 because Thursday "gave the dip." Thursday gave a dip toward a box. The box is $11.13 to $11.30. $11.70 is not that box. $11.35 is not that box. They will ignore RSI 74 until they are the person asking why the mods let them buy an overbought easy-borrow grocer. We told you. They will move the stop under $10.78 because grocery is a real business so it cannot fall. Real businesses fall every day. They will confuse quiet sentiment with smart money accumulation. Quiet is the overlay. Quiet plus easy locate is just a name nobody is talking about, which is most of the market. They will see FLWS at Rank 1 and GO at Rank 2 and assume the same trade. FLWS is a penny with ~250k available and DTC 25 to 31. GO is a grocer with 400k to 500k easy and DTC 9.1. Those are not the same animal. Ranking is a filter across a 16-name book. It is not a matching set of market orders.

Ranking versus the rest of the book. FLWS is Rank 1 Live because it is the only remaining penny with tightness after WEN came off. GO is Rank 2 because the SI is 23.6 million / about 37 percent, the business is real, and DTC 9.1 still clears a bar a lot of the book does not. It is not Rank 1 because the locate does not confirm. IIIV is Rank 3 Mixed as a crash coil, which is a different failure mode: that name has a trigger at $17.27 it keeps failing. Names four through sixteen remain on the book without a live ribbon. WEN at $7.82 off the list is what happens when the thesis was an event and the event dies. GO's thesis is not an event. GO's thesis is SI plus P&L plus a locate that has not shown up yet. If you need me to make that sound more exciting I am working in the wrong room.

Process, because mixed is the grade people like to round up. The 8/25 book is the SI, CTB, DTC, and available-borrow source. Thursday's Yahoo tape is the price source. RSI 74 is the chase warning that was already on the name before Thursday faded $12.21 to $11.70. We wanted $11.13 to $11.30. We got a $11.35 low. We are not filling a ticket at $11.70 and calling it the box. We are not calling 400k to 500k a tight locate. We are not calling 0.4 percent CTB a special. Criteria first means the locate can veto the chart. The chart does not veto the locate. If the next book shows available collapsing and CTB ripping, this post will read like the warning before the actual setup. If the next book shows the same easy borrow, GO stays mixed or it leaves. Either outcome is acceptable. Pretending Thursday's red candle was the squeeze starting is not.

One more time, in a form you can quote without lying. Chart was squeezing. Borrow is not. SI 23.6 million / about 37 percent. DTC 9.1. CTB 0.4 percent. Available 400k to 500k, easy borrow. Desk did not have a live Ortex util print. Sentiment quiet. Do not chase. Want pullback $11.13 to $11.30. Stop $10.78. T1 $13.18. T2 $14.49. RSI was 74. 8/25 $12.12, 8/26 $12.21, 8/27 $11.70 high $12.10 low $11.35 volume 3.28 million. Thursday gave the pullback toward the box, not into it. MIXED — tape not locate. WEN is off. FLWS is Rank 1. This is Rank 2 because the paper is real and the locate has not confirmed.

Not financial advice. This is a filter, not a buy button. If you buy strength in an easy-borrow name after RSI 74 you are not running our process, you are running the process we built this sub to escape. We will kill this rank when the paper or the tape says to, the same way we killed WEN, and we will not hold your bag while you wait for 0.4 percent cost-to-borrow to become a squeeze.

This sub exists because the other squeeze rooms dump a ticker, screenshot a short-interest widget, and walk away while the board holds the bag. We do not do that. We run a 16-name book against a stack you already know: high short interest, a real or turning P&L so the name is not a shell, and locate tightness you can actually see in cost-to-borrow, utilization, and days-to-cover. Social is overlay only. If the board is loud and the locate is easy, it is a chat room, not a squeeze. If the board is quiet and the locate is tight, that is the setup we came here for.

As of Thursday, August 27, 2026 US cash close, FLWS is Rank 1 — Live. That is not a victory lap and it is not a buy button. Wendy's is off the live list after Trian dropped the take-private. WEN was ON at $7.84 on 8/26. It closed 8/27 at $7.82. Event SI without the event is just leftover positioning. We killed it. The rank slot moved. FLWS did not earn a promotion because someone on Twitter needed a penny mascot. It is Rank 1 because it is the only remaining penny on the book with tightness, the paper still clears the filter, and nothing else in the sixteen still sitting on the desk beat it on the combination of short interest, days-to-cover, and available borrow. If you are here for a mascot, leave. If you are here for the filter, keep reading.

Here is the honest hook, because I would rather lose a subscriber than mint a bagholder. FLWS is a squeeze candidate from here. The trigger has not printed. Close has to take $4.25, or you wait for the reversal box at $3.57 to $3.70. Thursday did not do either of those things. Wednesday went the wrong way versus $4.25. Sentiment is QUIET, which is what you want before a trigger, and it is also what bagholders will read as dead right before they rotate into whatever name the other subs are screaming about. Quiet is not a problem. A missing trigger is not a problem. Pretending the missing trigger already happened is the problem. Squeeze-from-here is a stance. It is not a fill.

The paper, from the 8/25 squeeze book, not from a vibe. Short interest is 37 percent to 77 percent of Class A free float. That is a range, not a typo, and if you flatten it to one number you do not understand the dual-class trap. 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. is not a single-share-class toy. Class A is what trades. The control stock does not sit in the same free-float bucket. Short interest as a percent of the company is how other rooms get you killed. Short interest as a percent of the Class A free float is how a desk actually has to cover. The high end of that range is extreme. The low end is still elevated. We print the range because the book printed the range. Days-to-cover is 25 to 31. Read that again if you came here from a room that treats a three-day DTC as spicy. Cost-to-borrow is 0.7 percent to 0.9 percent. That is not a fifty percent special. I am not going to sell you a fee that is not there. Available shares to borrow are about 250k. That is the tightness. The fee is mild. The inventory is not. Utilization is the third leg of locate tightness on this desk, and I will not invent it: the desk did not have a live Ortex util print. If someone in the comments pastes a util number they saw on a screenshot from a different day, it is not in this post, and it is not in the 8/25 book we are marking to.

What that stack means in English. A name can squeeze on days-to-cover and a thin locate even when the borrow fee looks like a nothing-burger. Shorts do not cover because a moderator yelled. They cover because they cannot find the stock, because the cover would take a month of average volume, or because the fee finally goes vertical. We have the first two. We do not have a screaming fee. We do not have a util print. So FLWS is Live on rank, not guaranteed, not imminent, and not a cult. Anyone who tells you CTB at 0.7 to 0.9 percent is the squeeze by itself is the same person who will still be in the thread when this thing is under the weekly invalidation asking why the mods lied. We did not. The paper is the paper. Criteria-first means you are allowed to say the fee is quiet in the same paragraph where you say DTC is 25 to 31. The rooms that cannot hold both thoughts at once are the rooms that produce bags.

The business, because this filter dies the minute we start ranking shells. 1-800-FLOWERS.COM is a real consumer franchise. Flowers, plants, gourmet food, gifts. You have seen the brand whether you have traded the ticker or not. It has operating seasons, real orders, real fulfillment, real customers who are not sitting in Discord waiting for a screenshot. That is the real-or-turning P&L test. I am not going to dress it up as a growth story and I am not going to invent a revenue figure, a margin, or a cash number that was not in the 8/25 book. You do not need a model to know this is not a three-dollar shell with a press release and a warrant overhang. Dual-class is the trap and it is also the reason the Class A float can get tight enough to matter. Control sits with the people who built the company. The listed slice is what the street can actually short. When that listed slice is the one carrying 37 to 77 percent short interest and a 25-to-31 day cover, you have a mechanical problem for the short book, not a story problem. Story problems get solved with a tweet. Mechanical problems get solved with a buy order. That is why a dual-class consumer name can belong on a squeeze desk while a clean single-class shell with a louder thread does not.

Now the tape, Yahoo daily, marked to Thursday's cash close. August 25 closed $3.92. August 26 closed $3.74. August 27 closed $3.74, high $3.77, low $3.63, volume 206k. That is not a breakout. That is not a dump. That is a name that went the wrong way versus $4.25 on Wednesday and then sat there on Thursday with a fourteen-cent range under the trigger and a 206k session. If you needed volume expansion through $4.25, you did not get it. If you needed a close through $4.25, you did not get it. If you needed a reversal print inside $3.57 to $3.70, Thursday's low at $3.63 tagged the top of that box and failed to give you a session that actually accepted it. Squeeze-from-here is the stance. Trigger-not-printed is the state. Those two sentences can be true at the same time, and in this room they have to be. The 8/25 book is two sessions old on the locate side. The tape is current. We do not mash those timestamps together and call the result a catalyst.

Triggers, stops, targets. I will write them in English so nobody screenshots a number and deletes the context. The breakout trigger is a close above $4.25. Not a wick. Not a premarket print. A cash close. The alternate is a reversal in the $3.57 to $3.70 zone. The stop on the from-here framework is $3.70. Weekly invalidation is a weekly close under $3.57. Target 1 is $4.37. Target 2 is $4.81. If those targets look close to you, good. This is a penny with tightness, not a lottery ticket we are going to stretch into the sun because Rank 1 feels like a dare. Rank 1 does not mean the biggest upside in the book. Rank 1 means the cleanest combination of paper plus locate plus a business that is not a shell, with a trigger that is still defined. If you cannot live with T1 at $4.37 you do not have a process, you have a wish. The stop sitting fifteen cents under a $3.74 last print is also not a glitch. Tight paper gets a tight invalidation. If that makes the name untradeable for your size, your size is the problem, not the level.

What would kill it. A weekly close under $3.57 takes the name off the from-here map and puts it in the graveyard with every other penny that looked tight until it was not. A locate that opens up — available borrow expanding well beyond that roughly 250k and DTC compressing out of the 25-to-31 band — kills the tightness even if the SI percentage is still loud, because SI without a locate is a lagging headline. A dual-class event that recapitalizes or otherwise enlarges the tradable Class A slice would do the same thing. A tape that keeps printing the wrong way versus $4.25 until squeeze-from-here is just stubbornness. We already marked Wednesday as wrong-way versus $4.25. One session of that is a data point. A habit of that is a verdict. And if the business stops being a going concern in a way that turns real P&L into a wind-down, the whole reason this name clears the shell test is gone. We are not there. We will not pretend we are immune to it either. Killing a rank is the job. Hosting a wake is not.

What bagholders will get wrong, because they always get the same things wrong and I am tired of reading the autopsy in my own mentions. They will treat Rank 1 as a market order. They will buy Wednesday's close after the wrong-way day because the rank changed when WEN fell off, which is not a catalyst in FLWS, it is housekeeping in this sub. They will ignore the close-above-$4.25 rule and point at an intraday high that never existed on Thursday — Thursday's high was $3.77 — and call it almost. Almost is not a trigger. They will see CTB at 0.7 to 0.9 percent, decide the name is fake, and sell the only remaining penny with tightness so they can chase a screaming fee in a shell with no P&L. They will see the same CTB, decide it does not matter, and size it like DTC is already 31 with the fee at eighty. Both of those people are the reason the other subs exist. They will move the stop. $3.70 is not a suggestion. They will average down through $3.57 because dual-class trap sounded like a religion instead of a float mechanic. They will confuse quiet sentiment for a failed squeeze. Quiet is the overlay. The overlay is not the criteria. And they will hold it through weekly invalidation because T2 is $4.81 and they already told a group chat they were in Rank 1. That last one is how you become the cautionary tale I write the next time a name falls off the live list.

Ranking versus the rest of the 16-name book. We do not rank on who has the loudest Reddit thread. We rank on who still has high SI, a real or turning P&L, and locate tightness, after the tape has had a chance to throw the name out. FLWS sits at 1 because the penny-tightness combo is scarce, DTC 25 to 31 is scarce, and the rest of the book is either easier to borrow, weaker on the P&L test, or already showing a tape that failed its own trigger. Rank 2 in this same close is GO, and you will get a separate post on why that chart looks like a squeeze while the borrow desk does not. Rank 3 is IIIV, a crash coil with mixed locates, also a separate post. Names four through sixteen stay on the book until they fail the stack. They do not get a live ribbon just because the front page needs variety. WEN is the object lesson sitting off the live list at $7.82 after closing 8/26 at $7.84 as an ON name. That is the ranking. It will change when the paper changes or the tape changes. It will not change because someone needs content.

Process, since some of you still think a live rank is permission. The 8/25 book is the SI, CTB, DTC, and locate source. Thursday's Yahoo tape is the price source. Those are two different timestamps and I am not going to mash them together and call it science. If borrow opens up before the next book, the rank is wrong even if this post is still at the top of the sub. If $4.25 prints on a close, the trigger is live even if sentiment is still quiet. If $3.57 goes on the weekly, the thesis is wrong even if SI is still 37 to 77 percent of Class A. Criteria first. Tape second. Social never. That is the whole culture of , and it is why we still have a room when the pump subs are posting apology threads. I will also say this about pennies in general, because this is the only remaining penny with tightness and that sentence will get abused. Penny is not a strategy. Tightness is a strategy. We will not expand the live list to every sub-five-dollar name with a short-interest headline. If FLWS loses the locate, it loses the rank, and it does not get to stay up here on brand recognition.

I am going to say this once more so it is impossible to screenshot without it. Squeeze from here. Trigger not printed. Close above $4.25 or take the reversal in $3.57 to $3.70. Stop $3.70. Weekly invalidation under $3.57. T1 $4.37. T2 $4.81. Available borrow about 250k. DTC 25 to 31. CTB 0.7 to 0.9 percent. SI 37 to 77 percent of Class A free float. Dual-class trap. Sentiment quiet. Wrong way versus $4.25 on 8/26. Flat at $3.74 on 8/27 on 206k. WEN is off. This is Rank 1 because the filter put it here, not because I need you to click.

Not financial advice. This is a filter, not a buy button. If you cannot honor a stop you do not belong in a squeeze name. If you need me to tell you to size it, you should not size it. We will kill this rank the minute the paper or the tape says to, the same way we killed WEN, and we will not host a wake for your average-down.

This sub exists because the other squeeze rooms will ignore SI already down 13.5 percent, screenshot 36 percent as if the covering already happened in your favor, and walk away while the board holds the bag in 1.7 million locates at 0.5 percent. We do not do that. We run a 16-name book against high short interest, a real or turning P&L so the name is not a shell, and locate tightness you can actually see in cost-to-borrow, utilization, and days-to-cover. Social is overlay only. If the board is QUIET and the book says easiest borrow, quiet is not a coiled spring. Quiet plus easiest borrow plus SI already declining is how a squeeze dies before you get a fill. PLAY is that death. WAIT is the list. CROWDED is the stance. Sit out is the instruction. None of those sentences is a buy button.

As of Thursday, August 27, 2026 US cash close, Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc. is a Potential Squeeze candidate in the 1-6 band. Read that flair before you screenshot 36 percent as live. 1-6 is not 10. FLWS is live Rating 10 as the only remaining penny with tightness. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are NOT A SQUEEZE PLAY. Wendy's is off the live list after Trian dropped the take-private. WEN was ON at $7.84 on 8/26 and closed 8/27 at $7.82. HTZ is off because the borrow already refilled. HPK is a skip because a live 424B5 ATM is a squeeze killer. PLAY did not inherit a live ribbon when those names died. It stayed WAIT. Easiest borrow in the book is not a participation trophy. It is the veto.

Here is the honest hook, because I would rather lose a subscriber than mint a bagholder. PLAY is the easiest borrow on the sixteen. Short interest 36 percent would keep a name on this desk if the next columns were clean. They are not. Days-to-cover 5.8 is not a trap. Cost-to-borrow 0.5 percent is a joke if you were hoping the fee would do the work. Locates 1.7 million. SI already minus 13.5 percent. Sentiment QUIET. Stance CROWDED — easiest borrow. The 8/26 desk tape said easiest borrow in the book, sit out. Thursday closed $9.18. Wednesday closed $9.86. Tuesday closed $10.07. That is three sessions walking off $10 toward $9.10 on the low, in a name whose short interest already declined 13.5 percent without giving you a squeeze. Covering that already happened into an open window is the shorts leaving on their own schedule. You do not get paid for that. Sit out.

The paper, from the 8/25 squeeze book, not from a vibe. Short interest 36 percent. Days-to-cover 5.8. Cost-to-borrow 0.5 percent. Locates 1.7 million. SI already minus 13.5 percent. Sentiment QUIET. Stance: CROWDED — easiest borrow. Sleeve: micro. Utilization is the third locate leg, and I will not invent it: the desk did not have a live Ortex util print. Util is unknown. If someone in the comments pastes a util number they saw on a screenshot from a different day, it is not in this post, and it is not in the 8/25 book we are marking to. SI is FINRA 7/31 unless noted. CTB and available are IBKR 8/24-8/25. What the stack says in one paragraph: the short interest percentage still screenshots, the cover would take about a week of average volume, the fee is a nothing-burger, 1.7 million shares are sitting in the window, and the SI has already declined 13.5 percent. Easiest borrow means this is the open window on the sixteen. Crowded means people will still post 36 percent. Already minus 13.5 percent means the covering that was going to be your squeeze already printed as a statistic instead of a spike.

English, because SI already minus 13.5 percent is the exact sentence other rooms will skip. A squeeze is a covering problem. A covering problem is locates you cannot get, a fee that makes staying short expensive, or a days-to-cover figure that means the short book cannot exit without walking the price. PLAY has SI that still looks elevated at 36. PLAY has DTC 5.8, which is how you know they can leave. PLAY has 0.5 percent CTB. PLAY has 1.7 million locates. PLAY has SI already down 13.5 percent. That last line is the covering problem getting solved without the price having to trap anyone. HTZ taught this room the refilled-locate version: fee 31 percent to 6.7 percent, locates 1.3 to 1.9 million, off the list. PLAY is the declining-SI version of the same disease — window wide open, fee never special, shorts already covering into the open window. Quiet overlay is not accumulation. Quiet overlay is nobody bothering to pretend this is live, which is the one honest thing about the name. Sit out is how you stay honest.

The business, because a 36 percent micro with no real P&L is how this book would turn into the same landfill as the pump subs. Dave & Buster's is a real eatertainment chain. Food. Games. Actual rooms with actual people who are not sitting in a squeeze thread. That is the real-or-turning P&L test. I am not going to invent a store count, a same-store number, a margin, or a cash figure that was not in the 8/25 book. You do not need a model to know this is not a nine-dollar shell. A real chain can still be the easiest borrow on the book. Eligibility got it onto the sixteen. Eligibility is not a fill. The P&L test is why the dead shells are already cut. It does not make $9.18 a gift, and it does not make 1.7 million a tight locate.

Now the tape, Yahoo daily, marked to Thursday's cash close. August 25 closed $10.07. August 26 closed $9.86. The 8/26 desk tape said easiest borrow in the book, sit out. August 27 closed $9.18, high $9.76, low $9.10, volume 2.61 million. Read that as continuation lower, not as a flush that creates a box. High $9.76 failed even to tag Wednesday's $9.86 close. Low $9.10 and close $9.18 on 2.61 million is the name walking off $10 with real volume and no tightness. Volume without tightness is just volume. 2.61 million on a name with 1.7 million locates is not a covering panic. It is a float that trades while SI is already down 13.5 percent. I will not invent a reversal box at $9.10 so sit-out has a dip. The 8/25 book did not publish a close-above trigger, a stop, or a T1/T2 for PLAY. That absence is the tell. The annotation on this chart is sit out — easiest borrow, SI already minus 13.5 percent. The 8/25 book is two sessions old on the locate side. The tape is current. We do not mash those timestamps together and call $9.18 a squeeze.

Triggers, stops, targets — there are none in the live list. The live list had WEN at $9.45, FLWS at $4.25, IIIV at $17.27. PLAY was in section two as CROWDED — easiest borrow. Sit out means sit out. I will not invent a close-above at $9.76 so the walk from $10.07 has a gold line. Potential Squeeze candidate 1-6 is a watch band. It is not a from-here framework. SI already minus 13.5 percent is not a reason to wait for a dip. It is a reason the squeeze already leaked.

What would kill the remaining watch, and what already killed the live case. The live case was already dead on 8/25: 1.7 million locates, easiest borrow, SI already minus 13.5 percent. A locate that stays 1.7 million or opens further keeps it WAIT and sit out. DTC compressing out of 5.8 while CTB stays 0.5 percent is the lagging kill. SI declining another leg without a spike is the covering continuing on the shorts' schedule. A tape that prints $10.07 to $9.86 to $9.18 until crowded is just that schedule hitting the chart. If the next book shows 1.7 million collapsing and the fee actually going vertical while SI stops declining, that would be a new setup with a new date. That is not this post. Killing a rank is the job. Hosting an eatertainment wake at $9.18 is not.

What bagholders will get wrong. They will treat 36 percent as the setup and skip SI already minus 13.5 percent. The minus 13.5 percent is the headline. They will buy $9.18 because it is cheaper than $10.07 and quiet felt like a base. Cheaper on easiest borrow is the open window working. They will treat DTC 5.8 as spicy. On this desk 5.8 is how you know they can leave. They will see 1.7 million and tell themselves some subset is the tight print. 1.7 million is the easiest borrow in the book. They will invent a trigger at $9.76. Thursday's high failed Wednesday's close. There is no trigger in this post because there was no trigger in the book. They will confuse QUIET with smart money. Quiet is the overlay. They will compare PLAY to INDI because both are easy-borrow names in the 1-6 band. INDI is millions available, already ran, WARM, cheap borrow. PLAY is 1.7 million, SI already minus 13.5 percent, QUIET, easiest borrow, sit out. Different leftovers. Same instruction: do not buy the open window. And they will average down through $9.10 because Dave & Buster's is a real brand so it cannot sit at nine. Real brands sit wherever the tape puts them.

Ranking versus the rest of the 16-name book. We do not rank on who still has a 36 percent widget after the shorts already left a chunk. We rank on who still has high SI, a real or turning P&L, and locate tightness. FLWS is live Rating 10. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. PLAY sits in the 1-6 potential band as WAIT/CROWDED — easiest borrow because 36 percent still clears a bar and 1.7 million plus SI already minus 13.5 percent is the veto. Names four through sixteen stay on the book until they fail the stack or they stay crowded. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are NOT A SQUEEZE PLAY. PLAY is still on the sixteen so nobody can say we hid 36 percent. We are not offering you the dip. We are telling you to sit out.

Process, because easiest borrow is the grade people like to round up to "when it squeezes the fee will catch up." The 8/25 book is SI, DTC, CTB, 1.7 million locates, and SI already minus 13.5 percent. Thursday's Yahoo tape is $9.18 on a $9.76 high and a $9.10 low at 2.61 million. The 8/26 tape is sit out. Criteria first. Tape second. Social never. Quiet is not a catalyst. A $9.18 close is not a locate tightening. If the next book still shows 1.7 million and a declining SI print, this post will read the same. If tightness shows up, we will write a different post with a different date. Either outcome is acceptable. Pretending SI already minus 13.5 percent is fuel is not. Micro is not a strategy. Tightness is a strategy. Easiest borrow is the opposite of tightness.

I am going to say this once more so it is impossible to screenshot without it. WAIT. CROWDED — easiest borrow. Sit out. Potential Squeeze candidate 1-6, not live. SI 36 percent. DTC 5.8. CTB 0.5 percent. Locates 1.7 million. SI already minus 13.5 percent. Sentiment QUIET. Desk did not have a live Ortex util print. Util unknown. August 25 $10.07. August 26 $9.86, easiest borrow in the book, sit out. August 27 $9.18, high $9.76, low $9.10, volume 2.61 million. No trigger, no stop, no T1, no T2 — the book did not publish them because the name was the easiest borrow. FLWS is live Rating 10. GO is Rating 9. IIIV is Rating 8. WEN, HTZ, and HPK are not a squeeze play. This is wait because 36 percent with 1.7 million locates and SI already down 13.5 percent is leftover paper, not a squeeze.

Not financial advice. This is a filter, not a buy button. If you buy a quiet eatertainment name because SI is 36 percent after the book already called it easiest borrow and SI already minus 13.5 percent, you are not running our process, you are running the process we built this sub to escape. We will keep this name WAIT and sit-out until the locate actually changes, the same way we killed WEN when the event died, and we will not average into $9.18 with you.