we know it's not short covering. short interest remained steady through the entire run up. institutional holdings reported from the 13Fs shows a net increase of about 6m shares... new vs sold out:
New Positions 99 964,580
Sold Out Positions 67 909,597
no significant new positions were added in Q4... but yesterday we watched the stock open and snap directly to $278 and hold while chewing through 1m volume in about 15 minutes while marking $2 increases in 5 seconds... then simply sit at its mark for another 4m shares for the day.
now look again at that chart and notice the $280 stair step from last week... then look what the stock held at... and now look at where the stock is right now... reaching for it again.
in the absence of selling AND buying... the stock is snapping to the line.
there is a bot moving the stock without accumulating shares. it alone is the reason TSLA trades as high as it does. and it alone is the reason why Tesla has been able to fund its growth.
There are few reasons for the stock going up. Since SolarCity merger a lot of people stayed out. Others were reluctant because of impending cash raise end of quarter/year results was another unknown. During that time stock had sunk too much and we see a rebound compensating for it. We're probably looking at $245 pullback if Tesla does not provide any meaningful (and optimistic) data on their Model 3 developments.