Lucid Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:LCID) walks into its second-quarter print Tuesday evening carrying one of the most crowded short books on the exchange.
Roughly 47% of Lucid’s float was sold short as of the most recent FINRA settlement, according to Benzinga Pro data — a bearish bet that’s grown even as the stock has staged a dramatic recovery.
- LCID stock is steady into earnings. See the chart and price action here.
LCID Squeeze Potential
Lucid’s stock setup is worth pausing on. Shares bottomed at an intraday low of $2.37 on July 14 during a chaotic single-day washout, then more than tripled to $7.67, a rebound of 222.6%.
Short sellers who piled in during the crash are now sitting on a stock that’s refused to roll over, with the 14-day RSI reading 58.8 and price holding above both its 20-day $6.71 and 50-day $6.12 moving averages.
That combination — a heavily shorted stock in an uptrend, walking into a binary catalyst — is the textbook recipe for a short squeeze.
If Tuesday’s numbers come in clean, Lucid’s crowded short base doesn’t just fail to press the stock lower; it becomes forced buying that accelerates the move.
The Numbers on the Table
Wall Street enters the print modeling a wide loss. Consensus calls for revenue of $428 million and a loss per share of $2.49, following a Q1 that missed on both lines, per Benzinga Pro data.
Options traders are pricing a 14.8% implied move on the report, more than triple Lucid’s typical 4.62% post-earnings swing, a sign the market expects fireworks regardless of direction.
That’s the tension heading into the bell: a stock whose chart says momentum, a short base that says skepticism and a consensus that says another ugly quarter is already baked in.
A quarter that merely avoids a fresh liquidity scare — rather than beats outright — may be enough to squeeze the Lucid shorts that piled on during the crash.
LCID Stock Price Activity: Lucid stock was unchanged at $7.56 at the time of publication Tuesday, according to Benzinga Pro.
Photo courtesy of Lucid Group Inc.