IREN's Bears Back Off Before Anthropic Buzz Fuels a Bounce: Short Seller Tracker

A report that Anthropic is

's mystery cloud customer sent the stock up in early trading Monday— just days after the latest exchange data showed the bears backing off.

The Information reported Sunday that Anthropic was the "leading frontier AI lab" that chief executive Daniel Roberts alluded to on the August earnings call when he announced multi-cloud contracts with customers that the company signed. Neither company has confirmed the report. Monday's rebound came after three straight sessions of declines that resulted in a brutal 15.7% slump last week.

Short volume — shares borrowed and sold in a bet the price will fall — dropped to 5.52 million shares on Friday, from 8.36 million in the previous session, according to exchange data tracked by moomoo. The pullback may reflect deteriorating risk-reward for fresh shorts: after sliding more than 25% from its late-September high, the stock was sitting near $35.20 support (see the last image below), a poor place to press new bearish bets, and some traders may have covered ahead of the weekend rather than carry risk into the unknown.

That fits the longer trend. Outstanding short interest — shares sold short and not yet bought back — has unwound from about 27% of the float at the end of July toward 20% two months later, meaning bears have been covering into weakness rather than adding. Friday's short-volume share of trading was still 14.33%, above the 13.51% average, so bearish interest has not vanished — it has simply stopped pressing.

The pessimistic case, though, is not just about shorts. Real money has been leaving: money-flow data shows net outflows nearly every session since late September, including a $11.71 million net outflow in the first 15 minutes of trading Monday, with selling spread across retail-sized orders and institutional blocks alike, even as the stock opened higher.

The slide began after research firm SemiAnalysis posted on

Wednesday about user reports describing outages and storage failures at IREN's legacy British Columbia sites — claims neither audited nor answered by the company — and spread into a sector-wide AI-infrastructure selloff on Thursday as Nvidia-backed Firmus's $5.5 billion IPO met weak demand. With only 9.65% of holders in profit and average cost at $40.50 against Friday's close, every rally faces a wall of trapped sellers up to $41.10 resistance.

Source: X.com

The bullish counterweight is the AI story that made IREN a market darling in the first place. AI Cloud revenue reached $128.8 million in its fiscal 2026 ended June 30, up from just $16.4 million a year earlier, and B. Riley kept a Buy rating while trimming its price target to $91 in late September.

SemiAnalysis itself said IREN's newer Texas sites "look much better," and its Childress data center hosts buildings for Microsoft. Technically the stock is washed out — momentum gauges deeply oversold — which is fertile ground for exactly the kind of sharp bounce an Anthropic headline can ignite.

For the bounce to become a trend, two things need to happen: the Anthropic report needs confirmation, and the daily money flow needs to turn positive with the stock reclaiming its $40.40 average cost. Until then, this looks like a relief rally — tradeable, but not yet trustworthy.

Share your thoughts on IREN in the comments section. Would a confirmation on the multi-year contract with Anthropic be enough to propel IREN's shares higher,  or do you expect the stock to give up those gains later? Let your voice be heard by voting below. For those reading this column for the first time, you can also see more of these columns and my Options Chatter columns by following me

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