Longs Reclaim Control. Active longs have reasserted control, lifting WEN’s Long/Short Ratio to 1.47x from a battleground-low 1.11x in late May. Long notional now stands at $480M against $431M short. Active longs are again the larger book even as shorts hold a ten-year high.

Short Interest At Ten-Year High. Short interest hit a ten-year high of 54.8M shares, up 98% YTD and 24% of float (both 10Y highs). Notional short interest is currently $431M, nearly equal to 10Y peak, $463M observed in November 2016, when the firm’s market cap was more than double the current $1.4B.

Reddit Revives The Playbook. A WallStreetBets “Save Wendy’s” campaign sparked a surge in volume. Over 100M shares traded Thursday June 25, Nasdaq halted the stock twice. The day prior the price ripped from $6.26 to $7.86 in one session off near 20-year lows.

Shorts nearly doubled in 2026; a take-private bid and retail crowd threaten the trade.

Wendy’s has flipped from battleground status, noted in our mid-May report, to squeeze risk. One month ago active longs and shorts sat nearly even at 1.1x; today active longs have rebuilt to 1.47x while shorts, having nearly doubled the position to 54.8M shares, find themselves pinned against a 90%-utilized borrow and a Squeeze Score reloaded to 95. S3 has defined battleground stocks as those with roughly equal active long positions and short positions.

A wave of Reddit-driven retail buying collided with the hire of new CFO Steve Cirulis, while activist Nelson Peltz's Trian keeps a potential take-private deal alive. Short sellers bet structural weakness blocks a deal, but with active long institutions adding and retail interest piqued, the asymmetry has shifted. Shorts may take comfort, however, in the speed with which the May rally was retraced leading to a 10-year low on Monday, June 22.

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