Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ) dropped another 3.3% on Monday, sinking to a record low and marking the ninth consecutive session of declines, according to Stocktwits.

The slide was set off by a multi-pronged financial update that disappointed Wall Street: Hertz issued a profit warning and reported preliminary second-quarter adjusted corporate EBITDA that missed consensus analyst expectations.

The initial damage was severe — the stock plunged a record 41% in a single session, its steepest one-day decline since its 2021 post-bankruptcy relisting, before continuing downward. Overall, the stock has lost roughly 62% year-to-date.

The speed of the decline has turned Hertz into one of the market's most shorted names. As of Thursday's close, more than 56% of Hertz's float had been borrowed by traders betting the stock falls further, S3 Partners data showed as reported by Bloomberg, per Stocktwits.

"Short interest has increased dramatically," S3 managing director Ihor Dusaniwsky told Bloomberg.

According to Stocktwits' report of his figures, Hertz has seen an additional 13.7 million shares shorted — worth about $30 million — since June 24, meaning roughly 20% of all short positions were opened in less than two weeks.

Stocktwits reports the sell-off centers on rising vehicle depreciation costs and unexpected weakness in the used-car market, which pushed Hertz to slash its second-quarter earnings forecast to a range of $50 million to $80 million.

Layered on top was a sudden capital-raising push: a new stock issuance alongside a $350 million secured exchangeable notes offering completed last month, with an option for an additional $50 million, which the company said would boost liquidity and financial flexibility as it advances its turnaround efforts.

That combination of dilution risk and deteriorating fundamentals is what ignited the short-interest surge.

The Hertz setup illustrates a positioning principle that Moomoo's analysis of 31 large-cap AI-exposed stocks also highlights: names that are heavily shorted and carry expensive downside protection are the most fragile, because every marginal seller is already positioned the same way.

Moomoo found short interest and option skew correlate only weakly (r = 0.39), so convergence between the two — as in CoreWeave, at 12.65% short interest and 14.51 points of skew — signals concentrated bearish pressure.