CRBP is heading toward its third straight weekly gain of 10% or more
The shares of Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRBP) are up 1% to trade at $7.86 today, after Canaccord Genuity raised its price target on the drugmaker to $38 from $36 while maintaining its "overweight" rating. The analyst in coverage is bullish on Corbus Pharmaceuticals' recent pact with Kaken Pharmaceutical to develop lenabasum, a drug for systemic sclerosis and dermatomyositis.
CRBP has only turned in one negative session in 2019 thus far, and is on track for its third straight weekly win of 10% or more. Heading into today, though, the drug stock was still trading below its 12-month breakeven point. That hasn't stopped all seven of brokerages in coverage from rating the equity a "buy" or better, including a bull note late in 2018.
Short sellers are starting to head for the exits. Short interest fell by 5.5% in the last two reporting periods to 13.35 million shares, the lowest since Oct. 1. This represents a hefty 27% of CRBP's total available float though, and a whopping 26.4 times the average daily trading volume.
In the options pits, there is also some skepticism to be unwound. Looking at data from the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX) shows CRBP stock's 10-day put/call volume ratio of 0.15 ranks in the 93rd percentile of its annual range. While this means purchased calls still outnumbered puts on an absolute basis, the high percentile indicates a much healthier-than-usual appetite for long CRBP puts over calls in the past two weeks.
Echoing this, the security's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.82 sits in the 100th percentile of its annual range, indicating that near-term traders have rarely been more put biased in the past 12 months.