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If people have multi-billion bets against your employer and they want to pay for an ominous sounding article, then yes.
by rajacombinator 8y ago
If people have multi-billion bets against your employer and they want to pay for an ominous sounding article, then yes.
- twostorytower 8y ago100% this is the case.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoShorts are desperate. Current highest Model 3 VIN puts production at 4K/week. They’ll easily hit 5k/week target by end of June. Usual disclaimer: TSLA shareholder
- rootusrootus 8y agoI feel like it's the other way around. With the market cap so completely out of sync with reality, shorting seems like the safer choice.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoThe market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent. When the short squeeze occurs, it will incur pain. Personally, I don’t think their valuation is irrational. They’re not a car company, they’re an energy storage company, the market for which is enormous.
- ajross 8y agoNo one has multi-billion bets against TSLA. It's only like 25% off its all time high and has a market cap bigger than GM.
- throwaway5752 8y agohttps://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/key-statistics?p=TSLA https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/key-statistics?p=TSLA A bit down the page on the right, you'll see "Shares Short", "Short Ratio", "Short % of Float", and "Shares Short (prior month)". What that is telling you is that almost $10B of Tesla stock has been borrowed and sold (with the profit coming from buying in the future at lower prices, ie, betting against TSLA). That is increased about 7% from the prior month, and would take almost 5 entire days of average trading volume to close out all the short positions. This is a high level of betting against a stock by any standard.
- beambot 8y agoIs this short ratio atypical? I presume it involves some major institutional investors being against TSLA, but is there a good way to determine who?
- tofu8 8y ago>Is this short ratio atypical? I wouldn't say so. There are other heavily shorted stocks that have a much higher short ratio because of their small float (e.g. MTCH). >but is there a good way to determine who? Short sellers don't have to disclose their positions, unlike investors who're long the stock. You can try to get a better sense of who's thinking what through headlines and analyst notes/reports. Side note: Elon tweeted out that we'd see the 'burn of the century' (a short squeeze) and that it would be bigger than the VW/Porsche squeeze in 08.
- throwaway5752 8y agoThanks, for replying when I couldn't! Generally I agree with you. I would disagree that this level of short interest is typical, I think 20%+ short interest is high 90s percentile territory. The relatively low short ratio is more indicative of how highly traded TSLA is (short ratio = short interest / avg daily volume). If there's a way to report who is short a stock, I don't know it. There are also other trades to profit from decreases in an underlying security (buying puts, selling calls) and I don't know about reporting obligations there, either.
- et2o 8y ago25% of all Tesla stock is out on loan according to the first Google result for "Tesla short" [1] Assuming most stocks on loan are due to shorting, 0.25*50 Billion (Tesla Market Cap)= approximately 10 Billion being shorted. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/01/tesla-short-interest-hits-record-high.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/01/tesla-short-interest-hits-re...
- shanghaiaway 8y ago12.5B
- et2o 8y agoI left some out out in my estimate in case stocks are loaned for another reason I'm not aware of.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]