Last week was earnings weeks for Tesla. We are going to change up the report a bit this week and discuss the top 5 FUD headlines before going into the regular #Pravduh about #Tesla report. My “kudos” to CNBC for covering Tesla in every which way possible, some of which I didn’t know existed or wanted to exist. I’ll start with two CNBC pieces.
In honor of another wicked cool quarter, here’s a view of Tesla history that you might have missed if you only read CleanTechnica.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you have to give the short sellers credit for their dedication. Hedge fund manager Mark Spiegel even follows the market while taking a bath — two computer screens perched near the tub keep him apprised of the latest ill winds. Much of his time is spent sitting at his dining room table, sending a steady stream of tweets explaining why Tesla will eventually crash and burn, making Spiegel an even wealthier man.
Tesla set record after record in 2018. It passed up automaker after automaker in terms of sales as well as market cap. And it actually started turning a profit. Let’s have a closer look as 2018 comes to a close.
You may remember months earlier this year when the financial press and certain analysts obsessed over Tesla’s declining cash balance. Perhaps it was genuine, but my impression is it was “concern trolling,” faux hysteria, and even an attempt to confuse and manipulate the public in the worst cases.
This struck me yet again while looking at a chart that a CleanTechnica reader created and shared.
The story of a potential Tesla short squeeze is one we’ve been quiet about for a while. It has honestly been a little bit bewildering — Tesla [TSLA] has frequently been the most shorted stock on the US stock market, and at critical junctures where logic would tell you that short sellers would bail, few have done so.
As you may have seen, a longtime Tesla bear and short seller recently made a full, high-speed, screeching U-turn and starting supporting Tesla. The explanation included 4 CleanTechnica charts regarding Tesla sales versus the competition’s sales. But that was not the end of the story.
One of Wall Street’s most famous short sellers, Andrew Left of Citron Research, has been trying to make a mockery of Tesla for years. Five years ago Left crowed, “By the time this [Model 3] product is even approaching market, there will be multiple other 200-mile range plug-ins that have been out for years.” In turn, Left bet heavily against Tesla — sure that the electric automaker was doomed. Then, it all changed.
Longtime Tesla short firm Citron Research has totally flipped on Tesla [TSLA]. It has gotten straight from its position shorting the stock all the way on over to a comfortable long position in the stock, according to a report issued by the firm today. The longtime shorter of Tesla’s stock issued a multi-page report to justify its change of heart, citing numerous charts from CleanTechnica in support of the change — well, four charts out of the 18 we published on Sunday.
Supplementing this wonderful article by Peter Forman detailing the various ways short sellers are manipulating Tesla stock [TSLA], below is a portion of a superb piece published on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation last November. Here’s the start of the article:
