Albemarle Corp (NYSE:ALB) stock is up 1.6% to trade at $99.19 after an upgrade at Mizuho. The analyst upgraded ALB to "outperform" from "buy" yesterday evening and stood on their price target of $130, citing surging energy storage demand.
The stock is bouncing off last session's 11-month lows, now looking to snap its five-day losing streak. However, the 10-day moving average, which has pressured the shares lower since early September, still lingers above. Year to date, the equity is down 29.3%.
Notably, short interest represents 10% of the stock's available float. It would take short sellers roughly five days to cover the 11.76 million shares sold short at ALB's average trading pace.
The lithium producer sports a 10-day call/put volume ratio of 5.43 on the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX). This ratio stands higher than 96% of all other readings from the past year, hinting at a much healthier-than-usual appetite for bullish bets of late.
What's more, ALB's Schaeffer's Volatility Scorecard (SVS) sits at 84 out of 100, suggesting the equity has tended to outperform options traders' volatility expectations during the past year.
