"[The shorts] were already running: public.flourish.studio: Upstart Short Interest "

Yeah, ever since Upstart scored a solid commitment for capital, and inflation started coming down, the business environment for them improved, and any chance of a short term implosion disappeared. Still a lot of shorts out there, though, and if Upstart shows solid growth and a return to profitability with a ballpark flat interest rate environment, more and more may give up hope, giving a solid boost to buying interest in the coming year.

"An interesting question is what expectations are built into the current price."

Yep, I have no precise estimates for you, just a lot of growth with a tremendously large addressable market. It's a story stock, probably will be for years, as long as they show growth from here and don't disappoint too badly.

I'm a value investor at heart, but I got sucked into this stock by the combination of great growth, real earnings that briefly gave the stock a decent looking PE if you projected solid growth, and huge a addressable market. Got caught by surprise by their inability to keep making money when inflation and interest rates skyrocketed, but the stock dropped so much I thought the story made it worth holding onto.

It would be smart to run some numbers, but really it's a bet on robust growth for years to come and there may not be too much to be gained by making it more granular than that.