Tesla is an incredibly innovative company and I'd bet a lot that they'll be hugely successful in the long run. However I have to warn people on HN against inte

Tesla is an incredibly innovative company and I'd bet a lot that they'll be hugely successful in the long run. However I have to warn people on HN against interpreting the recent stock rises (from ~30 to 80) of TSLA as public faith in the company. What happened was a "short squeeze". At one point ~45% of TSLA stock was short, and as the price rose the investors with short positions were forced to buy long in order to cover. The buying drove the price even further up and caused an even bigger "squeeze" on those with short positions. This pattern leads to the astronomical rise you saw. Of course there was a real boost from the good earnings report which caused a 15+ point gain but a lot of the intermediate gain was due to the short squeeze.