Vladimir Lenin famously said: “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” I think the shorts have done something similar. They have hired the shares from us with which we will bankwupt them.
Maarten just wrote an epic piece on Elon Musk’s apparent decision to drop Wall Street and drop a beat on the world via a more enlightened, independent, inspired, societally beneficial, long-term corporate approach than we are used to seeing — even from Tesla.
In the Q1 2018 earnings call on Wednesday, there was an Elon Musk who clearly was not in the mood to be nice to Wall Street and the financial press.
I am not a Tesla shareholder, so listening to Elon Musk on the Tesla Q1 2018 conference call was absolutely enthralling to me. You can tell he is really tired of all the Chicken Little’s screaming “the sky is falling!” With mostly good humor, a few stiff interjections, and a hang up, he made plenty of news in the conference call. He gave a very short intro, basically saying that he is finally pleased with production of the Model 3.
Tesla has announced that is will begin making Autopilot crash data public and will update it quarterly. Releasing that information could support Elon Musk’s claim that Autopilot saves lives.
When Elon Musk first tweeted out an article of mine some years ago, naturally, I was ecstatic. What was also cool is that it sat at the top of his twitter feed for a few weeks and the only other things he had tweeted in a period or 2–3 months directly related to his companies (my article didn’t — it was a more generic solar power article). That’s not how Elon tweets today.
On the Tesla quarterly conference call today, one questioner couldn’t help asking about Tesla Model Y production. It’s the model millions of people really, really, really want — and since we know so little about it, we are thirsting for information.
I know, I know, I know!!! Tesla needs to finish the Gigafactory and ramp up Model 3 production. Then, Tesla has to start production of Model Y, the Tesla Semi, and a Tesla pickup. However, my ADD mind cannot stop thinking about Tesla homes (and commercial buildings), and I just got a flicker of hope that this may come true!!!
If you ask people today if cleantech is exciting, they will most likely not care or, if part of our cleantech bubble community, they will say “yes” and start shouting out “Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, Mars, Musk, Tesla … (yeah, I know SpaceX is for space travel not cleantech, but you know, Elon, Tesla, Musk, SpaceX…). The trouble is, Elon Musk has no rivals. I mean, business-wise, there is a long list of competitors, but in terms of popularity, he seems somehow unchallenged. Rivalries have always inspired rivals themselves, but also the watchers, the ones who supported one or the other, and I am talking about it in the positive sense of urging people to do more, do better, or just do.
The official numbers are now in and more than 38 million shares of Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) were in the hands of short sellers as of April 13, 2018. That’s a whopping 10 million shares picked up by shorts in just one month’s time and a strong indication that TSLA short interest topped 40 million shares later in the month. To put the numbers in perspective, TSLA shares held by shorts during the past 12 months have previously ranged from 27 million shares to a bit over 31 million. Even with those lower numbers, TSLA managed to sometimes hold the title of the most shorted stock in the USA! Above 38 million shares, though, that means that more than 30% of Tesla’s tradable shares are in the hands of entities that are betting the stock will lose value. The track record of those who bet against Elon Musk is not good, particularly when the number of shares sold short reaches such epic heights.
