Join push for SEC Investigation of TSLA manipulators and inside traders

[Papafox]

After the SEC spent a ton of man-hours looking at Elon's tweets, it is only fair they extend an equal effort on the real problem we see every trading week, which is stock price manipulations and media-shorts or analyst-shorts connections that may nclude insider-trading.

Let's get a discussion going on how best to proceed.
Suggestions:
* Realize that shorts will be viewing this thread as well as longs. We're not out to get anybody other than lawbreakers. We're trying to see enough scrutiny be put on TSLA transactions and nefarious connections that could potentially include insider trading so that actors in the future are less likely to choose to do this. We really need the SEC to catch a few of the lawbreakers in the act so that they serve as examples to others.
* We do not wish to libel anyone. I can honestly say that I have seen some very questionable behaviors in terms of timing and shorting before certain Goldman-Sachs downgrades, I think it is fair to ask the SEC to investigate as we lay out evidence, but we do not want to call someone a party to insider trading. That's the SEC's job.
* We need a TON of TSLA investors who honestly believe that manipulations or insider-trading are taking place to send in tips to the SEC. Let's investigate what is legal and illegal. I hope to call the SEC this week and make some inquiries about manipulations of the stock price. It'd be a shame if 500 of us sent tips to the SEC about manipulations and what we were claiming might have been legal. Let's do our homework and then make out contacts.

Why should the SEC look at TSLA for manipulations and insider trading?
* It is the most heavily shorted stock on any U.S. exchange
* It is the most volatile of the large-cap stocks with lots of shorting. This volatility is caused in part because Tesla as a company is only just now achieving substantial free cash flow and (hopefully) starting to show quarterly profits in Q3.
* It is a favorite topic of the media
* Elon is a favorite target of the media.

Please identify your interest in participating and add any suggestions.
Welcome!

 

[oneday]

I think this post should be cross posted here. Date and time will be important for any investigation. Maybe the SEC investigators realized the only reason Musk wanted to go private was to get the shorts off Tesla’s back. If the SEC knew what to investigate maybe they will. Thanks @Papafox for starting the thread.

[snip]Remember the Bloomberg bear raid on Sep 18? Someone dumped 1.25M shares of TSLA in 90 sec or so in coordination with the release of the story on Bloomberg Terminal. TSLA dropped $12 in 2 min, stopping out lots of retail investors. These are the deep pockets I'm talking about. Who even owns 1.25 shares? There's only a few large funds and some market makers that have that kind of holding. And the privacy rules on the exchange prevents us from finding out who's manipulating the SP and defrauding investors. And the SEC is NOT investigating.

View attachment 340300

 

[gora321]

Sometimes volume is not visible on some market but you see a big dip. You just need to find volume on different market. This one was yesterday on Tradegate Exchange/Europe. They must be coordinated for such volume. US trading begins at 15:30 CET.

TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

 

[bhtooefr]

As I suggested in the market action thread... as far as news articles with falsehoods that appear to be intended to manipulate the market, if you see one, immediately save it in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and archive.is.

Screenshots can easily be doctored, and therefore are less reliable evidence than archive services, and Wayback Machine archives have been successfully cited in the courts. (I'd also use archive.is, simply because it's disrespectful of robots.txt.)

 

[elasalle]

Is there some scope for Tesla Investor Relations to be working on behalf of Tesla Shareholders?

 

[ggr]

I will help in any way I can. I filed an SEC report on a NYT article a few weeks ago, but have heard nothing back of course.

 

[AWDtsla]

What about this trade? If it's unclear now, this was done on Thursday before the SEC lawsuit, expiring on Friday.

Someone bought 1008 $TSLA puts expiring tomorrow for $133,560. Rough math is telling me $1.25MM won’t be enough to fight the SEC. : wallstreetbets

 

[Papafox]

Very useful posts so far.

My research suggests that manipulating the stock price is indeed a violation of U.S. securities law. Two common violations are the pump and dump (used in bull markets by a shareholder) and the short and distort (used in bear markets) which consists of shorting the stock and then publicizing false reasons for the shares to drop. My impression is that as you read the regulations of what types of activities are prohibitied, it reads like a normal day of TSLA trading. The violations don't just look like they're there, they are flagrantly there.
* Market manipulation is illegal under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Section 9(a)(2)
Here is what Section 9(a)(2) says:
PROHIBITION AGAINST MANIPULATION OF SECURITY PRICES Prohibition against manipulation of security prices .
SEC. 9 . (a) It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of the mails or any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of any facility of any national securities exchange, or for any member of a national securities exchange-
(2) To effect alone or with one or more other persons a series of transactions in any security registered on a national securities exchange creating actual or apparent active trading in such security or raising or depressing the price of such security, for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others .
* There's very little question that some of the manipulations we have witnessed with TSLA are illegal. The big question is whether the SEC is willing to put in the man-hours to research and prosecute. That is our job. A large number of TSLA investors need to show such flagrant violations of the law that the SEC feels compelled to investigate and pursue wrongdoers.
* I wish to concentrate this week on the market manipulations aspects of TSLA short-selling
* We need volunteers to list examples where investigations of insider-trading are most likely to be found.
* Ultimately, I suspect we will be sending individual communications to the SEC, but let us again look for the most potent alternative.
Thanks for your active participation!

 

[BenPrice]

My Tesla Is Broken (@BrokenTesla) on Twitter

This twitter user has at least some fabricated issues. In some display issue posts he is clearly manipulating steering controls to give the appearance of defect.

If this account owner is associated with trading this would be an SEC violation and this person should also be sued by Tesla directly for libel/slander.

 

[sundaymorning]

My Tesla Is Broken (@BrokenTesla) on Twitter

This twitter user has at least some fabricated issues. In some display issue posts he is clearly manipulating steering controls to give the appearance of defect.

If this account owner is associated with trading this would be an SEC violation and this person should also be sued by Tesla directly for libel/slander.

I hope Tesla looks into this and goes after him if he’s making stuff up.

 

[davecolene0606]

Experience suggests that volume re complaints and examples with specifics are what will be effective.

Volume can come from these boards easily.

Specifics will take a bit of leg work but enough braintrust/lurkers exist here as well.

As the SEC is understaffed, the path to success is the path of least resistance. We must do all the work including references to to the regs violated.

Date
circumstance
related transaction
result of manipulation
reg violated
CC to rep in congress
times as many of as possible

Fire Away!

 

[Mokuzai]

I think comparing the charts on days when the uptick rule is in effect vs normal trading is very telling. If going after illegal manipulation is too much for the SEC would a petition to have that rule permanently applied to TSLA be viable?

 

[larmor]

Maybe someone has a news feed aggregator, won't be hard then to come up with lists of articles. The wording or diction used in the articles is heavily tilted against tesla. An evidence for this was the recent news on the audi e tron, the article was gushing over the car with constant false comparisons with the tesla MX...

Maybe parse the articles in a natural language processing engine to get the slant of the artcles...

 

[Papafox]

I think comparing the charts on days when the uptick rule is in effect vs normal trading is very telling. If going after illegal manipulation is too much for the SEC would a petition to have that rule permanently applied to TSLA be viable?

I also have been of this opinion, Mokuzai. If the SEC understands there's a tremendous quantity of manipulation right now with TSLA but lacks the manpower to ferret it out, the right thing to do would be to impose the uptick rule for a period of time (a year) while the SEC researches who violated what rules and takes the necessary steps to enforce the law. What we're looking for is a fair market. We don't have that right now, due to the flagrant manipulations. Your suggestion would bring fairness back to TSLA trading with the least effortt for the SEC. It's worth a serious look!

 

[BenPrice]

My Tesla Is Broken (@BrokenTesla) on Twitter

This twitter user has at least some fabricated issues. In some display issue posts he is clearly manipulating steering controls to give the appearance of defect.

If this account owner is associated with trading this would be an SEC violation and this person should also be sued by Tesla directly for libel/slander.

If you review the posts with any level of common sense:

Creates a new separate account after 9 months of ownership, naming it @brokenTesla,
and spams nonstop about pretty much any issue you could have by unplugging a connection on the car or mashing the cars controls rapidly. Implies that he’s had double digit service visits and nothing fixed, which just is impractical, but also verifyable on Tesla’s end.

At times @s media outlets, retweets all major fud accounts.

If the person were a normal person having severe issues with their car, or any other product, what benefit does creating an anonymous account have to solving your problems? None. But let’s give the benefit of the doubt that maybe this person is 100% honest, and all of these problems which could easily be fabricated are honest...

I feel most reasonable people with the experiences this account claims to have had would return or sell the car. Right? On Sept 23 he claims to buy ANOTHER Tesla, which of course also has a gigantic and impossible list of issues. (Which all could be fabricated by either unplugging something or mashing the controls)

This is a PR campaign.

 

[ggr]

I still think it is also a good idea to send a letter to your federal Representative complaining about the SEC treatment of the matter. I haven't had a chance yet to make progress on my draft, but will try.

 

[neroden]

I would be happy to help but I have *not* been saving and screenshotting the disinformation articles. Yesterday's scam where a "Tesla misses Wall Street estimates" headline was sent out to Google and Yahoo and all the news feeds, and then the article was "corrected" to say that Tesla beat Wall Street estimates -- leaving the false negative articles in the search engine headlines -- is a particularly clear and dramatic example of market manipulation. There's no legitimate reason to have written the false headline, as it was simply a matter of checking whether one number was larger or smaller than the other. Who's saved the details of that one?

 

[Bunky]

I would be happy to help but I have *not* been saving and screenshotting the disinformation articles. Yesterday's scam where a "Tesla misses Wall Street estimates" headline was sent out to Google and Yahoo and all the news feeds, and then the article was "corrected" to say that Tesla beat Wall Street estimates -- leaving the false negative articles in the search engine headlines -- is a particularly clear and dramatic example of market manipulation. There's no legitimate reason to have written the false headline, as it was simply a matter of checking whether one number was larger or smaller than the other. Who's saved the details of that one?

I got that one. I emailed the author when I noticed his (almost certainly deliberate) mistake. The underlying article was ultimately updated but the links through Google news/finance were not.

Also, I love this thread. The use of negative media to manipulate TSLA is getting absurd. As a long and someone who investigates financial crime for a living, I would like to help wherever possible. Thanks.

 

[Xpert]

This is a great idea! Here's one that everyone is puzzled about, and not sure what we or the SEC could do about it: in recent months, there are an abnormally high number of negative/false negative Tesla articles vs. positive ones. There are large number of Twitter accounts bashing tesla with false negative news. Same for some Reddit. There were a few times I've seen in CNBC app where the top 8 out of 9 stories were about Tesla and most were false. what is really going on?

1. Russia executing massive fake news campaign against Tesla/Elon Musk?
2. High net-worth shorts spending money to get false negative articles published everywhere in order to push $TSLA down and profit?
3.Big Oil wants to kill or at least delay the electrification process that Tesla is spearheading?

for example, in September it's almost 5:1 negative vs. positive articles:
858 Tesla Headlines: 563 Negative & 122 Positive — #Pravduh About #Tesla In September | CleanTechnica

 

[Bunky]

This is a great idea! Here's one that everyone is puzzled about, and not sure what we or the SEC could do about it: in recent months, there are an abnormally high number of negative/false negative Tesla articles vs. positive ones. There are large number of Twitter accounts bashing tesla with false negative news. Same for some Reddit. There were a few times I've seen in CNBC app where the top 8 out of 9 stories were about Tesla and most were false. what is really going on?

1. Russia executing massive fake news campaign against Tesla/Elon Musk?
2. High net-worth shorts spending money to get false negative articles published everywhere in order to push $TSLA down and profit?
3.Big Oil wants to kill or at least delay the electrification process that Tesla is spearheading?

for example, in September it's almost 5:1 negative vs. positive articles:
858 Tesla Headlines: 563 Negative & 122 Positive — #Pravduh About #Tesla In September | CleanTechnica

Interesting theories. I think 2 and 3 are most plausible/almost certainly happening.

In terms of reporting manipulation to the SEC, I think we need to track patterns and repeat offenders. Where we can link those to people/parties with positions that would be helpful. We will need to demonstrate more than just a media bias, as ridiculous as the media bias may be:

https://www.msnbc.com/stephanie-ruhle/watch/elon-musk-steps-down-as-chairman-of-tesla-1333754435770?v=raila&