Tesla was once the most shorted company of all time. GameStop forced the system to adapt in ways that makes shorting harder to track. It's unclear how much of t

Tesla was once the most shorted company of all time. GameStop forced the system to adapt in ways that makes shorting harder to track. It's unclear how much of the old short positions (when Tesla was valued around $20bn) are still open. These facts imply some probable second order effects: - Big money trapped in short positions after Tesla was added to S&P 500 desperately needed people to sell Tesla shares so they could cover. - The costs of sponsored content to turn public sentiment against Tesla and Elon are insignificant compared to the liability of those short positions. - covering those short positions (even gradually over a long time) pushes up the share price above what it would otherwise be. I suspect this is why it's so confusing. Simultaneously Tesla prospects appear worse than they are if your impressions are formed by articles written by media institutions that shorts are paying for you to read, and the share price is above what even a balanced perspective would consider reasonable because shorts are still covering. Also "meme stock" really just means stocks that had extreme short positions taken against them are discovered by many small money investors that coordinate over social media. In some cases the short positions are so large they really should be illegal but hedge funds used loopholes. The lack of loopholes in Canada has lead to lawsuits. So stocks over-shorted by hedge funds and discovered by retail investors = meme stock (at least in many cases.