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With Tesla specifically, Elon promotes a "short sellers are evil" line.

threeseed 3y ago
Which is an integral part of Tesla's PR and marketing strategy. The idea being to cultivate an underdog attitude amongst owners. Even on Reddit's EV and Tesla forums you will see people default to wild conspiracy theories in order to defend the actions of the company or explain why EVs are having issues in certain areas.
- grecy 3y ago
  I don't think you need a huge conspiracy theory when one of the richest people in the world has a billion dollar short position on an EV company.
  - nateglims 3y ago
    I know it's fun to hate on billionaires these days, but it's not a conspiracy to short sell. If you look at the PE ratio and look at the automotive market and other telsa ventures, it's perfectly reasonable to believe it will not "clear the runway" with growth. The short sellers also happened to be really wrong this year.
    - grecy 3y ago
      Why does an extremely rich person want to bet a billion dollars against EVs?
      - ozfive 3y ago
        I'm assuming here: It was a hunch where he probably was thinking that the incumbent auto-makers would catch up and squash the new guy. People make these decisions all of the time based on what they know and how history has played out.
      - defrost 3y ago
        They're not neccessarily betting against electric vehicles if they short Tesla .. they're betting that other companies will pass them in the race.
        nateglims 3y ago
        They are specifically betting the stock will go down. That could be for a number of reasons and from the article, shorting was slightly profitable in the second half of the year. Perhaps around Cybertruck news.
      - nateglims 3y ago
        The simplest answer is they wanted to make money because they thought the stock was over valued. It is probably not due to EVs or Telsa specifically. Some people made a lot of money from it recently. From the article: > The losses by short sellers are a stark contrast to a year ago, when shorts made a $15.9 billion profit on Tesla shares as the company’s stock lost 65% of the value. But I'm also not sure where this idea of a whale short seller is coming from. With $13bn in losses almost entirely in 6 months, I would have to imagine there's just some riskier institutional investors. Another way to look at it is they made it cheaper for people who are bullish on tesla to buy stock.
    - dzhiurgis 3y ago
      Gated was hated for ages, received pies in his face and lost over 1 trillion by diversifying his portfolio.

Which is an integral part of Tesla's PR and marketing strategy. The idea being to cultivate an underdog attitude amongst owners. Even on Reddit's EV and Tesla forums you will see people default to wild conspiracy theories in order to defend the actions of the company or explain why EVs are having issues in certain areas.

grecy 3y ago
I don't think you need a huge conspiracy theory when one of the richest people in the world has a billion dollar short position on an EV company.
- nateglims 3y ago
  I know it's fun to hate on billionaires these days, but it's not a conspiracy to short sell. If you look at the PE ratio and look at the automotive market and other telsa ventures, it's perfectly reasonable to believe it will not "clear the runway" with growth. The short sellers also happened to be really wrong this year.
  - grecy 3y ago
    Why does an extremely rich person want to bet a billion dollars against EVs?
    - ozfive 3y ago
      I'm assuming here: It was a hunch where he probably was thinking that the incumbent auto-makers would catch up and squash the new guy. People make these decisions all of the time based on what they know and how history has played out.
    - defrost 3y ago
      They're not neccessarily betting against electric vehicles if they short Tesla .. they're betting that other companies will pass them in the race.
      - nateglims 3y ago
        They are specifically betting the stock will go down. That could be for a number of reasons and from the article, shorting was slightly profitable in the second half of the year. Perhaps around Cybertruck news.
    - nateglims 3y ago
      The simplest answer is they wanted to make money because they thought the stock was over valued. It is probably not due to EVs or Telsa specifically. Some people made a lot of money from it recently. From the article: > The losses by short sellers are a stark contrast to a year ago, when shorts made a $15.9 billion profit on Tesla shares as the company’s stock lost 65% of the value. But I'm also not sure where this idea of a whale short seller is coming from. With $13bn in losses almost entirely in 6 months, I would have to imagine there's just some riskier institutional investors. Another way to look at it is they made it cheaper for people who are bullish on tesla to buy stock.
  - dzhiurgis 3y ago
    Gated was hated for ages, received pies in his face and lost over 1 trillion by diversifying his portfolio.