Papafox's Daily TSLA Trading Charts

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above
Note: I've been traveling thousands of miles this weekend and am lacking sleep and short on time, thus the abbreviated post. I would like to mention a few things about call options you might hold, but instead I'll likely include it in my Monday post or place a notice in the main thread, linking to the TMC Rolling leaps thread on Monday.

Friday's market quickly turned from green to red. The most likely explanation is that U Mich suggested higher than expected sentiments are out there regarding expected inflation rates. This report (depicted in this Gary Black Tweet) then caused 10 year treasury bonds to spike above 4%, which gorked the market.

As for Tesla, we had the usual FUD to amplify the descent, no doubt with hedge fund shorting near the top of the dip to rev up the fear factor and allow algobots and scared investors to pull the stock the rest of the way down. Those wonderful folks at Reuters got the ball rolling with a story quoting a German source saying Tesla will not start German mass battery production before 2024- Handelsblatt. The story's title elicited fear by itself but then the content of the story suggested there's real problems with 4680 development. Fortunately, Tesmanian refuted some of the claims in this report, but of course it reached far fewer eyes than Reuters.

The support at 207 worked pretty much as expected. It deflected Thursday's dip with a bounce, but on Friday with the stock price sitting right on or above the support level for most of the day, the buyers who were using the support level as a buying target fell in numbers as they reached their desired shares and the continued dip of QQQ finally added enough downward pressure on the stock that it broke below support in the final hour. It's very similar to upwards pressure on a stock that's being capped finally breaking through the cap as positive macros and upward pressure become the dominant force. Ultimately, there's a limit to all support, resistance, and capping levels.

Much of the Wall Street concern of TSLA these days focuses on China demand issues, which I am not yet ready to accept. Why should Tesla lower the price on China vehicles right now to stir demand if they can ship those vehicles to Europe and elsewhere for higher prices? If you look at Europe backlog, it's big enough to absorb considerably more Shanghai vehicles than typically go there. Thus, if Tesla can find sufficient logistics, it can shift China/Europe percentage so that both destinations together absorb production. No price drop on Teslas sold in China so far suggests that Tesla has a plan that doesn't require a price drop yet. We get to learn that plan during Wednesday's ER conference call.

One reasoned voice that also thinks Tesla might have a logistics challenge rather than demand problem is Wedbush's Dan Ives. Here's a link to a youtube video of him explaining the situation on CNBC. Thanks to @Curt Renz for finding it.

With TSLA down so low, many analysts are doing the usual kneejerk price target drops. One of the latest is Wells Fargo, cutting TSLA from 280 to 230 because of higher interest rates. Ah... maybe the analyst needs to take a realistic view of 2023 earnings first.

The flip side of the kneejerk price target lowering is Goldman Sachs, which has just reiterated its 305 price target and buy rating.

The overall situation we're in is that Wednesday's ER could have a pretty good beat on analyst estimates, maybe 20% or more. There's so much fear of falling on down days and emerging FOMO on up days that volatility rules in both directions. We still need the questions of Elon's Twitter bid to be answered (likely before Oct 28 deadline) and macros have to decide it's time to call a bottom. Get those two pieces out of the way and get clarity about Q4 production vs. deliveries, and this baby will be ready to regain serious lost ground.

When U Mich released its inflation expectations Friday morning, the macros did a sharp U-turn and started to fall. Those sentiments then shot yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds above 4%, which brought about the expected fear in the market. Thanks @Discoducky for the link.

Percent of selling tagged to shorts ran higher to 47%, but of course that percent may be suggesting way too low a level of shorting underway if borrowers are going to non-FINRA exchanges for their shares. Thanks to TMC member @mb300sd for linking us to this chart, which shows TSLA short volumes at greatly elevated levels.

Friday morning's maxp was 222.50. There's no way the MMs were going to fight the strong downdrafts on Friday all the way, but they made sure that TSLA stayed above the tall put wall at 200.

This coming Friday's MaxP is 253.33, more than $30 higher than last Friday's. That said, the market makers have no great incentive to push TSLA higher but they don't have much incentive to hold it back, either, until it gets near MaxP. I think there are two reasons why nearly all the strikes are dominated by puts. This is either a monthly or quarterly expiration during a time when the stock price has been plunging quickly. People who bought puts earlier are in the money and holding the higher-strike puts and more recent put buyers are buying the lower strike puts. Those ridiculously low strike puts are likely bought by bulls who are using them to delay margin calls through the Q3 ER.

Thursday's options volumes

TSLA reached it's 52 week low on Friday. This is what a declining macro situation, aggravated by Tesla inappropriate fears, looks like. It's a setup for making money once the bottom is reached. Tesla could lead the market in the recovery.

Yikes, we lost all of Thursday's gains and then some on Friday.

For the week, TSLA closed at 204.99, down 18.08 from the previous Friday's 223.07. This has been a really stressful month for most of us. There's always a bottom, there's always a reversal, we just don't know when and where. Get exercise and spend quality time with the people and animals you love. That's a good recipe during these times.

Conditions:
* Dow down 404 (1.34%)
* NASDAQ down 328 (3.08%)
* SPY down 8 (2.28%)
* TSLA 204.99, down 16.73 (7.55%)
* TSLA volume 94.1M shares
* Oil 85.61
* IV 74.5, 91%
* Max Pain 222.50 for past Friday, 253.33 for coming Friday
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 47%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

On Monday morning TSLA opened with a gap up at nearly $210, thus delivering a disappointment to those entities that wanted to explore new lows with the stock price. TSLA's strength was primarily due to strong macros. The NASDAQ rose 3.43% and TSLA was up 7.01% giving it a 2X multiplier and keeping TSLA close to its typical 2.1X beta. Volume was 77.9M shares. For comparison sakes, NVDA closed up 5.89% and ARKK up 7.03%.

Buyers are those wishing to add before the ER, sellers are those afraid of a possible Elon Twitter deal and share selling after the ER. The movement of the macros tends to determine the direction for TSLA to go and then it's a wild ride either up or down. Normally you would expect TSLA to trade at a higher multiplier than other high growth stocks going into its ER, but we may be seeing the Twitter overhang acting as a counterbalance. Thus, we saw a multiplier not much different than that of other high growth stocks on Monday.

Our spreadsheet gurus are expecting a decent beat of analyst estimates, which have dipped to around 99 cents/share profits, Non-GAAP. More so than other ERs, analysts will be looking for color on the China demand situation and Q4 delivery expectations as well. The nasty analysts will try to get Elon to say that 2022 will have less than 50% deliveries growth, so that the mischief-making media outlets can dominate the beat with an ominous message about Q4. That's how the game is played.

If you get a chance, check out Dave Lee's Youtube interview of James Stephenson. Early in the presentation, James gives an apparently solid explanation of the China perceived demand problem at the end of Q3. Apparently with a new EV incentive coming, buyers expected Tesla to cut prices of Model Y to less than 300,000 RMB from 316,900 RMB to enable the discount. Tesla didn't do it, which apparently spurred on the acceptance delays. No one wanted the shame of overpaying. James thinks Tesla will cut the Model Y price for that reason before too long. Also, towards the end of the video, James gives ballpark numbers for 2022 and 2023 profits as $5/shr. and $10/shr., respectively. He mused that if TSLA remained near $200 a share going into 2023 then the P/E of TSLA would be a ridiculously low 20, for a company that is growing 50%/yr. with profits growing near 100%/yr. Absolutely nutso. TSLA HAS to go up if Tesla executes as expected.

So much to say about rolling leaps but I am in desperate need of counting sheep.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds rose all day and closed above 4% again. Fortunately, day over day was pretty much a wash

Percent of selling tagged to shorts dropped to 35%, suggesting either low manipulations or a preference for non-FINRA borrowing when acquiring shares to short

Max pain Monday morning was 250, which was a dip of $3.33 from Friday's number. With 250 still somewhat dominated by puts, a climb that high would not immediately be a big challenge that the market makers would have to take up.

Last Friday's options volumes

Thursday's and Monday's candles show many similarities.

Conditions:
* Dow up 551 (1.86%)
* NASDAQ up 354 (3.43%)
* SPY up 9 (2.57%)
* TSLA 219.35, up 14.36 (7.01%)
* TSLA volume 77.9M shares
* Oil 85.46
* IV 68.9, 79%
* Max Pain 250
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 35%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Tuesday was of course the trading day before the ER and you certainly have traders both excited and fearful, which partially explains the small gain for the day. TSLA closed up 0.38% to the NASDAQ's gain of 0.90%. Right after market close, both QQQ and TSLA shot up and TSLA gained more than $4 after hours. Since a beat is likely, there are buyers out there, but since there's fear in the air about several issues, FUDmasters and manipulators can do their work more easily, and so we saw willing sellers on Tuesday too.

The really critical issues that may be answered during the conference call are:
* Clarification of how Tesla plans to either ship enough vehicles or induce buyers in China to avoid an end of the quarter slow deliver, like in Q3
* Clarification about the state of 4680 production
* Plans for U.S. end of quarter deliveries if affected by IRA order deferrals
I honestly feel that the ability to calm unwarranted fears about demand and logistics will be at least as important as a beat on Wednesday. It will be refreshing to hear Elon and Zach lay out the situation. Can't wait.

We're unlikely to learn about the chance of a Twitter acquisition causing Elon to need another sale of TSLA shares this week, and so that overhang could affect the gains from a beat. If there's a beat, though, it does indeed increase the positive reaction after the Twitter questions are finally resolved.


TMC's @The Accountant just compiled a full list of Q3 earnings projections from retail sources. Glad to hear he's posting now on Twitter as @CPAinNYC .

Hmm, smells like a beat to me

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds were below 4% at market open, peaked twice above 4.05 and 4.025%, then slid below 4% for the close. QQQ started high, dipped twice, then closed on an up note. I suspect treasury yields were affecting the market today.

Percent of TSLA selling by shorts increased to 40% on Tuesday

Max pain was 245 on Tuesday morning. Look at how few strikes are call dominated. In theory, market makers should be less worked about a big rally, provided it stays below 290.

Monday's options volumes

TSLA eked out a small gain after starting high but getting beaten down by close

For those of you who might consider rolling leaps:
Rolling Leaps at low to no cost

This can be a useful method for moving deep in the money leaps to further expiration dates. Difficulties arise when the leaps become in the money or too close to the money and the minimum movement needed to bring about an expiration date change becomes difficult to achieve during one strong up or down run of the market on a given day.

Unfortunately, I had a very distracting and difficult year (17 yr. old dog in his final year of life and even bigger things going on). I neglected to roll my leaps regularly and ended up with too many set to expire in September of 2022. Fortunately, they were still very deep in the money and starting this spring I rolled them all to Jan 23, with a few even later. Now I’m most of the way through rolling those Jan22 DITM leaps to Mar23 or Jun23. As soon as that’s done I roll the Mar23s to Jun23 and then go to work toward getting at least 9-12 months wiggle room on expiration date. I should recover well from inattention to my leaps.

And so I rolled a bunch of Jan23 66.67 calls to a later date on Tuesday. I aimed for Jun23 expiration, but when the market started turning around noon time, I bit the bullet, and settled for Mar23s after adding about a dollar per share. Some days it just works that way. I mention this less than perfect roll because you really need to be prepared for such an event if you roll. I always have enough cash on hand to complete a traditional roll, if necessary. I can divorce my mind from the money on the table and just look at the numbers as a game that I want to win or at least lose with minimum consequences. I know about MMDs, bounces off the red/green line, and about how there’s a bias against TSLA trading in lower volume afternoon hours. I can navigate the challenges because I have lots of experience doing so. My point is that not everyone will do so well. I really don’t want to become the Mr. Answerman when somebody’s rolling doesn’t work out. I feel your pain too fully. Instead, I would just say that if you are going to roll your leaps, consider doing so with a large market movement up or down helping you if you choose to separate the buy and sell. Be sure your brokerage allows buying same day with funds from a sale, complete the roll without going overnight, have a realistic TSLA stock price change in mind and the dollars to complete the roll if the market turns too early.

Let’s talk specifically about realistic TSLA stock price change. Back before the 3 for 1 split, I had a rule of never trying for a roll that required a greater than $5 price change. After the split I should really have reduced that limit by 3, to something less than $2. That’s the TSLA stock price change needed, which can be quite different than the difference between the two call prices, because of Delta. The difference between a $4 and $8 call might actually be a $30 or higher change in TSLA stock price, which is unworkable on a basis of complete in a single day before market close.

Best wishes to all of you as we navigate this prolonged dip.

Conditions:
* Dow up 338 (1.12%)
* NASDAQ up 97 (0.90%)
* SPY up 4 (1.17%)
* TSLA 220.19, up 0.84 (0.38%)
* TSLA volume 74.8M shares
* Oil 83.59
* IV 68.6, 77%
* Max Pain 245
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 40%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Wednesday's market hours trading was unremarkable. TSLA closed up 0.84% to the Nasdaq's 0.95% climb. Volume was a lowish 55M shares.

In 3Q ER, TSLA beat on both GAAP and Non-GAAP profits.
* GAAP EPS analyst estimates...............Tesla delivered 0.95
* Non-GAAP EPS estimates.........1.02..Tesla delivered 1.05

Tesla beat the analyst estimates, but just barely. In previous quarters Tesla beat by a larger percentage and so the media feels it has to punish TSLA all the same. The way they do this is by highlighting the one slightly negative number, which was revenue being 2% less than expectations. Lovely. What we can take away from this media response is that until the Twitter overhang disappears and until the market bottoms out nobody is giving Tesla the benefit of the doubt. So be it and invest accordingly.

The real retail standout of this quarter was Dave Lee. His forecast for GAAP EPS of 0.95 was right on the money and his non-GAAP estimate of 1.12 was just 7 pennies above Tesla's results. Outstanding. Dave Lee just put together a youtube video which moves quickly and covers the highlights of the ER and CC, and I recommend you take a look at it here.

Here are a couple of personal observations:
*

Here a chart Tweeted by Martin Viecha which shows how incredibly slowly Operating Expenses (SG&A+R&D) is growing as total revenue grows. Back in 2017, OpEx ate up 32.8% of revenue. Tesla is so efficient as it expands that this quarter, OpEx only ate up 7.9% of revenue. Imagine how small a percentage it will be in Q4 if Tesla expands revenue by another 35-40%? Imagine what's coming in 2023 as Austin and Berlin hit their stride?

* Take a look at this post by TMC member @mongo . Elon and others today confirmed that Tesla is positioning itself to take advantage of the government rewards for EV battery manufacturers. Mongo shows you just how ridiculously inexpensive an EV battery becomes with these subsidies and buyer IRA rewards considered. Good by Ice vehicles, you simply will be uncompetitive compared to a Tesla in a comparable model.

* I watched the ticker as the conference call was going on. Stock price was rising as Elon and Zach were talking about the future. When the question came about whether TSLA could make its 50% growth happen in both production and deliveries, Elon suggested exceeding 50% year over year for production but probably not for deliveries. That was when the stock price started falling. Wall Street is so dense if they need to punish Tesla when it delivers over 50% production growth and perhaps 47% delivery growth in 2022 and misses its target by a sliver while every other auto manufacturer on the planet is showing negative growth and in many cases double-digit negative growth. It's nutso, but it's what we have to deal with for a while longer.

TSLA's Q4 should be "epic" according to Elon and nearly 40% quarter over quarter growth would indeed be epic. Elon says December demand in the U.S. should be good. I reserve a degree of skepticism until we confirm that claim. Nonetheless, growth and profits should be outstanding, but if the market is still in a funk, it may be in the same kind of mood its in right now and the pop you would expect might be muted. For these reasons I'm not betting on Q4 at this time and I continue to move my calls to June as a safer bet. If you're holding stock only, HODL should serve you way as 2023 looks to be terrific. If you are a call options holder, take a good look at your personal thesis regarding when you think TSLA will pop. Options will likely be cheap for a while and I for one am not shy about changing horses midsteam.

Another issue I wanted answered was the status of 4680 batteries. Elon gave the most optimistic answer saying 4680 production is up 3X this quarter and growing exponentially. Drew was a bit more cautious with a suggestion there may be more issues yet to fix. Let's continue to monitor.

Until the Twitter overhang is resolved, TSLA will likely remain weak. fortunately, that issue should be resolved by Oct 28, just a week or two away. As for interest rate and economic strength fears, I think that Q4 might really help alleviate some fears because profits could be so attractive in Q4 and then especially in Q1 of 23 that investors will realize that interest rates should not greatly pull down TSLA's valuation because an attractive EPS can be derived by looking at 2023 profits. There's no need to look at 2026 and then reduce those profits excessively for higher interest rates.

Overall, I'm very optimistic about the future of Tesla after this earnings call but I could see short term weakness because Tesla didn't beat as strongly as it usually does. Let's face it, Wall Street is in a very skeptical mood right now. Once my calls are moved to June, though, I'm going to relax and enjoy watching Tesla's amazing progress.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds rose pretty aggressively on Wednesday to close at 4.13%

MaxP on Wednesday morning was 243.33, down slightly from Tuesday. If we are to look at the MaxP chart and assume from after-hours trading and negative futures that TSLA may have a losing week, we have the previous support in the 204-207 area plus you can see the big call wall at 200 which the MMs may try to protect.

Tuesday's options volumes

It's been nice to climb the past three days. Now let's see if that headroom can cushion TSLA if it has a rocky week

Conditions:
* Dow down 100 (0.33%)
* NASDAQ down 92 (0.85%)
* SPY down 3 (0.71%)
* TSLA 222.04, up 1.85 (0.84%)
* TSLA volume 55.3M shares
* Oil 85.98
* IV 72.3, 87%
* Max Pain 243.33
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 41%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

As we last left off, Tesla's Q3 earnings beat analyst expectations but there was this quibble about Tesla's revenue being 2% below the imprecise number that analysts modeled for revenues. Thus, today Tesla and its investors were run through the spanking machine. Part two likely comes on Friday. TSLA closed down 6.65% compared to the NASDAQ's dip of 0.61%, more than a 10X multiplier. Volume was about twice the usual volume at 117M shares.

Manipulations came back on Thursday, with percent of selling by shorts rising all the way to 54%. I wasn't quite ready to trade the initial market open MMD because TSLA had already gapped well below 210 for the open. Still, you could see the twin tornados shortly after market open, and the rapid recoveries from these rapid pushdowns strongly suggests manipulations aimed at stirring up even deeper selling by algos and others. After the second tornado bottomed out, I started looking for a call roll opportunity on the climb side and I found one. If you compare the QQQ and TSLA charts, you'll see that QQQ broke into the green about 9:43am, climbing rapidly. TSLA was barely done with its first tornado bottom at the time. I waited for the second tornado to pass and with the second funnel cloud now past, I did the buy portion of a call roll. It worked. That long delay between QQQ's recovery and TSLA's is where a lot of those short shares were deployed in the manipulation. The pirates got bit by a macro turnaround and probably lost money. No tears here. Expect FUD incoming. The next 6 days, or until the Twitter overhang is removed, may well prove to be the final push lower before pirate covering or adding long positions.

Much of what we saw in the rest of TSLA's trading was related to following the macros with a negative "Tesla bad news" bias the whole way. Notice after 3:34pm that QQQ recovered nicely into the close but TSLA did not. This could be classic manipulations, but it realistically could also have been selling by the market makers to remain delta-neutral after a big negative day for TSLA, and the same could also be said about the hour earlier macro rise and fall.

Q4 likely will be an "epic" quarter with massive growth from Q3's and eye-popping profits. With IRA possible effects upon U.S. demand in December and weakness in the China economy, there's always risk. Thus I set my sights on June or beyond. Still, I think the market will realize just how big Q4 will be at some point in the quarter and start bidding the stock price up.

Regarding Twitter, I'm agreeing with some voices on TMC that this is a horrible time for Elon to sell TSLA stock to fund an acquisition. Since Elon is now talking about a $5B-10B stock buyback by Tesla in 2023, I see his newfound interest in buybacks to be far from coincidental. If he can arrange for financing of needed Twitter funds to stretch into 2023, then he could avoid any selling this year, wait for the likely POP of TSLA later in 2023, and then sell during the buyback so that the stock is not harmed. Can't wait to get this Twitter overhang behind us. We should hear no later than next Friday.

For Friday, we could see the 204 support weaken if it is hit hard enough or long enough. At that point market makers protecting 200-strike put wall would be the next support level. I will likely be doing any call rolling on the downswing until the Twitter overhang disappears, simply to be trading with the prevailing trend. That said, should positive news about Elon's Twitter quest surface, TSLA could turn strongly positive in a heartbeat, so don't take things for granted.

News:
* TMC's @Gigapress did an excellent job in this post of pointing out important comments in the ER conference call that deal with the future of Tesla. Highly recommended.

Percent of selling tagged to shorts zoomed higher to 54%, indicating lots of manipulations on Thursday

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds continued to scale higher, with a close above 4.2%. As I previously mentioned, the climbing interest rates are become irrelevant for TSLA because 1) Tesla doesn't need to borrow any money, and 2) You can justify a much higher stock price than the present one simply by taking a realistic look at what 2023 profits are going to be and then computing P/E from there.

Max pain on Thursday morning was 240. In theory a favorable announcement about the Twitter acquisition could send TSLA higher, but don't hold your breath quite yet. Market makers really would prefer for TSLA to stay above the 200 strike, with more than 65K put contracts. Rest assured if the put buyers are big hedge funds they'll do their best to push below 200 on Friday. It'll be the battle of the MMs vs. the hedgies.

Wednesday's options volumes

Those pirates working to get TSLA down as low as possible this week managed to push TSLA below Friday's 52-week low before the stock price recovered.

Conditions:
* Dow down 90 (0.30%)
* NASDAQ down 66 (0.61%)
* SPY down 3 (0.84%)
* TSLA 207.28, down 14.76 (6.65%)
* TSLA volume 117.1M shares
* Oil 85.98
* IV 62.1, 49%
* Max Pain 240
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 54%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

On Friday the macros decided to run to the moon, with NASDAQ up 2.31%. It was obviously not a good day for a TSLA push-down. Nonetheless, we saw some apparent mischief. If TSLA had climbed its normal 2.1X over NASDAQ it would have been up 4.85% instead of the 3.45% we saw. Where was most of that gain stolen? I suggest it was between about noon and 2pm when TSLA traded flat at about 212 while QQQ continued to march higher. As often happens in such a capping exercise, if the macros continue higher the cap will likely eventually fail and TSLA would play some catch up. That's likely what happened on Friday. I debated this point with an investor friend, and he suggested that there were no manipulations ongoing, some big investor was just busy selling shares. It's my belief this isn't a likely explanation because even if such an investor wanted to sell lots of shares, he should have allowed the stock price to rise slowly as he bought, still preserving an environment where buyers would continue to buy. Level trading while the macros are rising discourages buyers and would have a negative effect upon a big investor who wanted to shed the maximum number of shares in a day at the best price.

The good news is that we are a day closer to the judge's deadline for a Twitter deal, Friday, October 28. Any time during the week we could hear details of a proposed deal, which could be either bad or good news. When Elon adds details to the deal, bad news could potentially turn to good news, so don't be too quick to react. Personally, I continue to believe that Elon is a smart enough fellow to avoid selling stock when TSLA is near 200. There's more than one way to close this deal without selling TSLA shares immediately. The two big changes before we see TSLA head higher continue to be macro recovery and putting the Twitter overhang behind us. NASDAQ closed up 2.69% this past week.

Regarding estimates for Q4 deliveries, many internet pundits are suggesting delivery numbers that are just too low. Elon and Zach simply aren't going to sit by and let Tesla pile up at end of quarter, at least in China. They're going to either ship more out of the country or find a way to bring available supply into equilibrium with demand, even if it requires a small price cut. This will be an interesting tug-of-war to see play out throughout the quarter.

News:
* Tesla introduced two new colors, midnight cherry red and quicksilver at their Berlin factory only. Wait times for vehicles with these colors have now increased by months. Good news.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds spiked with market open but quickly corrected, which could explain momentary dip in QQQ after open, another dip around 11am, and then recovery in the afternoon. Yields closed just above 4.2%

Percent of selling tagged to shorts remained elevated, with a drop from Friday's 54% to Monday's 48%. Such a number suggests fewer manipulations afoot but still some.

Max pain Friday morning was 230, but in truth market makers would have preferred to keep the stock price below the short call wall at 215. A close at 214.44 after a climb of less than the stock's 2.1X beta suggests that was indeed their target.

Thursday's options volumes for this past Friday's expiration

Max pain was 220 for this coming Friday's expiration. The call domination begins at 215 again, so I think MMs might like to keep TSLA right about where it is as the week begins. Fortunately, you can see a big put wall at 200, which once again sets up 207, 204, and 200 as multiple support levels.

The rise in max pain you see on Monday was purely an artifact of the week's options expiration being for longer-term options, which set up the strange put overlaps above the calls. As the week progressed, the max pain number kept correcting.

We have a unique situation with 6 of the past 8 trading sessions being green but the two bad days were doozies. Part of the reason for the multiple green days was, of course, improving macros.

For the week, TSLA closed at 214.44, up 9.45 from the previous Friday's 204.99. That's a 4.6% rise for TSLA compared to the NASDAQ's 2.69% rise. It's a start. The coming week will be interesting with likely Twitter news coming our way. De-stress with the ones you love, get good night's sleeps this weekend, and we'll see you back here on Monday.

Conditions:
* Dow up 749 (2.47%)
* NASDAQ up 245 (2.31%)
* SPY up 9 (2.43%)
* TSLA 214.44, up 7.16 (3.45%)
* TSLA volume 74.1M shares
* Oil 85.05
* IV 59.6, 34%
* Max Pain 230 for past week, 220 for coming week
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 48%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

What a wild ride Monday was. Let's start with Sunday evening when Tesla implemented price cuts in China. The new price cuts ranged from about 4% to 9% and can be seen here in this Twitter thread by Dave Lee. Reuters ran the title Tesla cuts China prices by up to 9% as analysts warn of 'price war' (paywall) in order to spin the matter as negatively as possible. Nonetheless, the Model Y standard range now fell just below the maximum for a subsidy that expired Dec. 31. For clarification on subsidy and EV sales tax exemption drop dead dates, see this Gary Black Tweet. How much did the average vehicle drop in China? Farzad Mesbahi in this youtube video computed 5.8%. That's quite a difference from the Reuters headline of "up to 9%" drop.

Has the price reduction had the desired effect upon demand in China? Sunday evening, TMC member @Ryan27 said in this post that when he managed to check on availability of Tesla vehicles in China, all but the "P" models were now showing 2023 earliest delivery already. Troy Teslike will need to upgrade his absurdly low Q4 delivery number of 400K and Tweeted to the effect that Elon's delay in lowering prices caused 10,000 sales to be permanently lost. Rob Maurer took Troy to task for mixing facts with opinions and was temporarily blocked. Sigh.

And so the markets opened mixed but TSLA plunged immediately as if the small price cut that will likely lead to the company's most epic quarter yet was a really bad thing. While QQQ traded mixed, TSLA did a swan dive and even managed to dip below 200 long enough for those hedge fund pirates to harvest the stop losses set by unsuspecting retail investors. At times we saw trading higher than 400K shares/minute. Twitter's Fact Checking in this Tweet said there was a good chance Elon sold shares during the first hours in 5-6 huge selling sessions and later updated his estimate of Elon sales to perhaps $2-3 billion worth in this Tweet. Fact Checking made note of the double the normal volume and noted that volume returned to normal after the big selling frenzy, which suggested that Elon must have completed his selling. If so, the Form 4 should appear by Monday night, but so far no form. I would suggest it's possible that perhaps the selling isn't done yet or perhaps the selling on Monday was a big dog hedgie trying to imitate Elon selling for the purpose of pushing the stock price down and front running Elon's expected selling. Who knows? Fortunately, the NASDAQ gained 0.86% for the day, erasing the ability of any bad actors to manipulate the stock to a new low at day's end. TSLA closed down a mere 1.49%.

Notice the effects of various support levels 207, 204, and 200 (supported by the put wall). TSLA hesitated around 204 during the initial pushdown Monday morning. When the huge selling barrages came after 10am, 200 held except for a few minutes, then the stock price rose to near 204, then paused close to 207 before heading toward 212 and then a quick sink. I suggest having multiple support levels on Monday really helped the stock price out.

Later in the day the 10Q report came out. Here's a link. The generally accepted belief is that Elon can't sell until 24 hours after the 10Q was submitted. If submitted Friday evening after a certain hour, Elon should theoretically be able to have sold on Monday. OTOH, the date at the end of the 10Q was 24October, and if this was the submitting day (rather than the recording day) then Tuesday would be the first available day for Elon selling. Let's hope the macros are up on Tuesday so if there's more mischief by the bad actors or actual selling by Elon, TSLA doesn't fall too much. This week will be over on Friday, only 4 more trading days to go. Hang in there.

If you are a leaps holder trying to roll your ITM call options, remember that volatility is a gift if you take advantage of it in the right way.

Finally, remember that Tesla has guided to over 50% growth in 2022, which suggests over 475K vehicles produced. If the company can deliver a fair portion of those vehicles now that the demand issue in China is apparently addressed (you see, they did have a plan), then the spectacular growth in Q4 should compensate for a good portion of that 5.8% drop in China prices, particularly when you consider the words that Dave Lee reported in the linked Tweet that said, "Tesla has been adjusting the prices in line with costs, the company told Reuters in a statement. Capacity utilization at its Shanghai Gigafactory has improved, while the supply chain remains stable, leading to lower costs, it said."

Let me just say that internet reporters claimed that Chinese buyers were cancelling orders in droves at the end of Q3 in order to force Tesla to move up an expected price cut to Q3's end. If this is true, and if Tesla had responded as the buyers wished, then a really bad precedent would have been established of rewarding manipulative pressures. Tesla didn't bite but instead offered the discounts at a time in Q4 that still suited the needs of the company but surprised the buyers. If so, Tesla handled the situation well in my mind.

News:
* Electrek says Toyota struggles with EV shift, considers changing plans due to Tesla
* Morgan-Stanley drops TSLA price target to 330 from 350 while estimating embarrassingly-low profits through 2026.

Percent of selling tagged to shorts rose to 51%, suggesting increased manipulations. Note that finding shares to short in non-FINRA exchanges allows big shorts to disguise the level of shorting actually taking place.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds closed at about 4.25%, up a smidge from Friday

Max pain on Monday morning stood as 220. You can see more normal volumes return to the open interest chart above. In a nutshell, 200-strike remains a tall put wall, 210 is pretty neutral but slightly favoring calls, and everything above is call dominated.

Last Friday's options volumes for this coming Friday's expiration

You can see the high volumes for the negative day Thursday and for Monday's negative trading. TSLA set a new 52-week low on Monday with a brief dip barely below 200. Fortunately, the recovery was quick.

Conditions:
* Dow up 417 (1.34%)
* NASDAQ up 93 (0.86%)
* SPY up 5 (1.22%)
* TSLA 211.25, down 3.19 (1.49%)
* TSLA volume 100.1M shares
* Oil 85.09
* IV 60.8, 41%
* Max Pain 220
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 51%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

What a difference a day makes. No Form 4 came out Monday night and so the question remains: who was selling huge blocks of stock again and again on Monday morning? Instead, we had oddly high volume for the first hour or so Tuesday morning, with the stock price climbing, suggesting the heavy volume was being primarily pushed by buyers. Multiple times we saw volume over 400K shares traded in a single minute. Someone wanted in. That someone might be investors who are suspecting that we're not going to see more Elon selling before the Twitter deal likely closes on Friday. Selling on Wednesday would give little time for the transactions to clear before a Friday morning payment to close the Twitter deal.

Macro strength suggests that investors are itchy to get beyond the relentless Powell interest rate hikes. Expect a 0.75% increase in November but guidance by the Fed for lower raises going forward could make the market frisky. You have critics such as yours truly calling into question the timeliness of the data the Fed is using for its decisions, and you have some Fed members, such as the one from San Francisco, moving toward more dovish viewpoints.

All we needed was for the megacaps to do okay on their 3Q ERs, but you can see from the after-hours trading that things didn't go too well. Google missed (lower youtube activity yields lower ad revenue) and although Microsoft beat, it gave weak quarterly guidance and fell 7% in extended after-hours trading. Thus the NASDAQ futures were down nearly 2% as this post was prepared. The weaknesses we see in Google and Microsoft just highlight how Tesla is indeed going to pass them in market cap. Fortunately, TSLA stood up much better than QQQ to the after-hours bobsled run. I suspect TSLA investors are focused on getting the Twitter overhang out of the way and seeing some recovery in our stock price. Let's hope that strength carries over to Wednesday's trading. It might not as such a macro setup is a perfect opportunity for hedge fund pirates to short the opening and try to profit from generated fear. Their efforts might be thwarted by buying from the big dogs. We shall see.

I was rolling calls on Tuesday, selling first and waiting to buy, but rather than accepting a less than ideal solution as I usually do, I let the roll go overnight, which is dangerous and did indeed prove so. I can afford to wait until TSLA recovers to about 225 to close that roll, and I'm perfectly happy to be rolling on any significant Wednesday dip by selling a different strike call first and buying later.

My hope for the week is for TSLA to stay above 200 and for the Twitter Overhang to lift no later than Friday evening. This is just one of those weeks you have to get through. Things would get better next week with a max pain of 230 so far. Stay on your toes because this stock can gallop higher in a flash if positive Twitter news comes out during market hours.

While we TSLA investors dodge the slings and arrows of Wall Street this week, I'd like to share a Tweet by analyst Pierre Ferragu from an excellent thread:

Pierre's point is that if you looked objectively at this the strength of this stock, you will find the value of buying stock in this company extremely attractive.
* Tesla has been growing 50% per year for the past 10 years which suggests it can keep doing so for longer
* With only 2% worldwide market share, Tesla has room to continue its 50% growth for many, many years
* Gross margins more than twice industry average shows that Tesla is running circles around the average auto company
* Strong free cash flow. Notice that in Q3 that GAAP earnings equaled free cash flow at $3.3B. This is extremely bullish as most growth companies are pouring their profits back into R&D, Cap ex, etc. Tesla is not skimping here, but it is so efficient in using capital that it has truly turned into a money printing machine even while growing at a fantastic rate. Thus comparing earnings to free cash flow (FCF) is so much more impressive for a growth company than comparing earnings to profits. Tesla's profits are artificially reduced through the mechanism of depreciation. Even though the factories and the machinery inside has already long been paid for, Tesla takes a depreciation hit every quarter as a portion of those factory costs are accounted for.
* Finally, notice that Pierre uses a compelling ~40x 2023 estimated free cash flow for valuing Tesla. Wall Street keeps knocking Tesla's value down as interest rates rise, but Tesla doesn't borrow money and its value can be more than justified by next year's cash flow. Bravo, Pierre!

News:
* Teslarati shared that Tesla has received its EPA certificate to begin semi-truck deliveries. I can't wait to see one on the road.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds sank to less than 4.1% on Tuesday

Percent of selling tagged to short-sellers dipped to 41% on Tuesday, suggesting that day-shorting on down days such as Monday is more profitable than short-term shorting on an up day like Tuesday

Max pain Tuesday morning was 215 Tuesday morning. Call domination began at 210 with a 30K high call wall at 220. Expect the market makers to work towards a close below 220 this week, if possible.

Monday's options volumes

Tuesday's trading brought TSLA high enough to re-energize the 207, 204, and 200 support levels.

Conditions:
* Dow up 337 (1.07%)
* NASDAQ up 247 (2.25%)
* SPY up 6 (1.60%)
* TSLA 222.42, up 11.16 (5.29%)
* TSLA volume 96.5M shares
* Oil 84.65
* IV 58.1, 28%
* Max Pain 215
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 41%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

In case you haven't heard, Twitter is scheduled to be delisted from the NYSE on Friday, Elon Tweeted a video of him carrying a sink into Twitter HQ, Twitter stock zoomed above 53.75 all of a sudden in after-hours trading. Conclusion: Twitter will be Elon's this week. No more selling of Elon shares are possible this close in as part of the deal, and so TSLA investors are breathing a sigh of relief. I expect a good trading day on Thursday.

Looking at the charts above, you can see that enough investors either knew or strongly suspected the Twitter overhang was gone, and so despite the NASDAQ and QQQ trading down 2% for much of the day, TSLA remained in the green and generally varied from +3% to +3.5% of QQQ. TSLA volume was strong at 85M shares.

Notice the sharp dip 15 minutes before market close. This was an old-fashioned bear attack where Reuters dredged up a stale year-old inquiry by the DoJ and presented a headline to make it sound like someone at Tesla was suddenly at risk of criminal prosecution. At the same time, someone sold an enormous block of TSLA stock. Fortunately, the market rejected the ruse and TSLA stayed relatively strong through close and throughout after-hours trading.

Meta missed in their ER after hours, but the markets are taking it in stride and at present NASDAQ futures are up. With the potential for the macros to have just experienced their bottom and for the Twitter overhang to be removed close to each other, this sets the scene for a potentially strong TSLA trading day on Thursday. I definitely won't be sleeping in.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds have been falling for the second day, closing just above 4%

Meanwhile, percent of selling tagged to shorts drifted up to 46%

Max pain Wednesday morning was 217.50. At this point with Twitter secured, the question is: How high can TSLA go this week? TSLA is already in the zone of call dominance. I suppose it's all going to be about how high the stock can climb on its own and then MMs will try to stall it below the nearest not-yet-crossed call wall.

Tuesday's options volumes

With the Twitter news removing doubt that Elon is set to buy the company, many shorts will assume the bottom is in for TSLA and will seek to cover. Some investors previously afraid of the Twitter overhang will likely start buying. I suppose it's time to look at the upper bollinger band, which stands at 261.99. Notice that the stock price actually crossed above the mid bollinger band on Wednesday, so we don't have far to go in order to start bending the bands back to a positive trajectory.

Conditions:
* Dow up 2 (0.01%)
* NASDAQ down 228 (2.04%)
* SPY down 3 (0.75%)
* TSLA 224.64, up 2.23 (1.00%)
* TSLA volume 84.8M shares
* Oil 87.91
* IV 57.2, 26%
* Max Pain 217.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 46%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

I'm so glad I added the word "potentially" in front of "strong TSLA trading day" Wednesday when anticipating Thursday's trading. Four minutes into market trading TSLA gained more than 3.5% after showing significant strength in the pre-market. Most of those gains vanished 6 minutes later while QQQ was still not so terribly red. I'm guessing we had strategic short-selling to enable that plunge. As the day progressed, QQQ kept falling until a little past 3pm while TSLA endured a game of whack the mole at the red/green line for the entire day. In my mind, this was a good example of the pirates short-selling to get rid of the green during falling macros and then ensure that nothing resembling a rally appears. After all, Elon was busy firing Twitter execs on Thursday and you need to have your financing ducks in a row to do so. Falling macros pretty much kept TSLA from climbing most of the time, I suspect, and a little whack the mole was likely needed here or there to turn the day into one of those "nothing to see here investor-folks, move along" scenarios that are manufactured by market makers and others who wish to keep the stock price as flat or somewhat down at Friday's close.

The NASDAQ's poor trading was a result of Wednesday's weakness with Meta and fears of the Amazon and Apple calls after the close. As it turned out, Amazon gave disappointing guidance for Q4 and fell 20% before recovering to a mere 13% loss. Apple beat but was somewhat shy on revenue for core products and after losing 3% in market hours gained slightly after hours. NASDAQ futures are down more than half a percent and so the pirates will once again likely have some help in keeping TSLA tamed until Friday close. Sooner or later, though, the broader market is going to show a little green and give the TSLA buyers enough reason to jump in. None of the other megacaps look to be expecting good 4th quarters but so far I see nothing to prevent Tesla from experiencing an "epic" Q4. Surely some of that money invested in other megacaps is likely to find its way over to TSLA. Our day is coming because the Twitter overcast is breaking up now as we await the Nasdaq to show some blue sky as well. Looking forward to next week. In the meantime, TSLA has shown good resilience to market downward pressures in recent days. Don't give up on Friday quite yet, though. Sometimes our stock manages to slither out of the tight grip of its handlers.

To put TSLA's strength into perspective:
* On Tuesday it outperformed NASDAQ by 3.04%
* On Wednesday it outperformed NASDAQ by 3.04%
* On Thursday it outperformed NASDAQ by 1.83%

I couldn't help myself. I had to reproduce this chart from @The Accountant 's post here on TMC. Which megacap do you want to hold for the next year?

News: Streetinsider says that 95% of Uber drivers who tried using a Hertz Tesla in the test program had never driven an EV before. Now, 77% of those believe they will either stay with the Hertz program of renting Tesla EVs or buy an EV themselves. Those really are dynamite numbers when you consider how few drivers in that segment had ever tried an EV before and what a preposterously large percent now only want to do their Uber ride-hailing in an EV. My friends, we have just barely scratched the surface of Tesla's potential market. Let that SINK in.

How low can you go? Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds sank below 4% on Thursday

Percent of selling by shorts nudged up to 47% on Thursday

Maximum-pain.com did not produce any TSLA charts today. Let's hope they return. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a good alternative site, please send me a PM.

Despite the NASDAQ plunging once again, TSLA closed the day up 0.20%. In this market, we'll take it.

Conditions:
* Dow up 194 (0.61%)
* NASDAQ down 178 (1.63%)
* SPY down 2 (0.53%)
* TSLA 225.09, up 0.45 (0.20%)
* TSLA volume 60.3M shares
* Oil 89.08
* IV 58.4, 29%
* Max Pain
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 47%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above
Note: On the road with a tiny laptop, so my efforts will be slimmed down for a couple days

My expectations were met on Friday as the market makers indeed managed to keep TSLA well below its 2.1X beta on the NASDAQ. About 10:10am we saw a slight dip in QQQ but TSLA did a breathtaking cliff dive, with the help of some enthusiastic shorting from the pirates. The rapid speed at which TSLA recovered gives further evidence of a manipulative exaggeration of a dip. From noon until nearly 2pm TSLA was capped near 225, but as QQQ continued its relentless climb the market makers lost control of the cap and TSLA resumed a climb. This week was the week of the Twitter overhang removal, complete with some outrageously large blocks of shares being sold Monday morning. That TSLA managed to exceed 228 by Friday is a testament to the company's growing strength.

The coming week could be interesting as investors weigh the strengths of TSLA against the other megacaps.

News:
*Giga Texas has now produced 20,000 Model Ys. That's a big jump! Let's see how retail experts crunch the numbers. Q4 continues to look strong

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds dipped to 4% on Friday

Percent of selling tagged to shorts was a mere 44%, but doesn't tell the story. With the significant enhancements to a dip followed by some capping, 44% is just too low and suggests the market makers simply switched to non-FINRA supplies of shares to borrow.

Friday's max pain curve painted a picture of serious consequences for the options sellers if TSLA did some kind of big run on Friday, and so despite the macro strength, the market makers held TSLA back. It wasn't that difficult to do because some doubts still lingered from the

The transition point between put domination and call domination was around 220, but since market makers couldn't hold max pain of 220, they tried for 225, and that too gave way as the macros continued higher.

Thursdays options volumes

Max pain for this coming Friday is 225. Market makers may have a hard time holding 225 this week as the fog lifts from Elon's Twitter acquisition and investors start comparing TSLA to other megacap stocks for potential in Q4.

I've marked 225 with a red dot because I think it was the target price the market makers sought on Friday. They missed as the macros continued higher. Thanks @JimS for the chart. Two weeks in a row of "up and to the right", nice.

That's 10 up days in the last 13. I'm beginning to detect a pattern here.

For the week, TSLA closed at 228.52, up 14.08 from the previous Friday's 214.44. Hoping you've all had a restful weekend.

Conditions:
* Dow up 829 (2.59%)
* NASDAQ up 310 (2.87%)
* SPY up 9 (2.38%)
* TSLA 228.52, up 3.43 (1.52%)
* TSLA volume 69.2M shares
* Oil 87.90
* IV 54.7, 15%
* Max Pain 220 for past Friday, 225 for coming Friday
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 44%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

So, TSLA spent yet another day treading water in the mid-220s. Ho hum. Market makers are keeping TSLA in check until the Nov 2 press conference by Darth Powell in which he is largely expected to raise rates another 0.75%. What Wall Street will be listening for will be guidance going forward. Let's hope we'll hear a more dovish stance as the number of hawk haters grows.

Comparing TSLA with NASDAQ, the NASDAQ was down 1.03% to TSLA's dip of 0.43%. TSLA volume was slightly higher than normal at 60.9M shares traded. Needless to say, TSLA losing less than half of the NASDAQ's losses is bullish. The stock is well positioned to run higher once the broader markets rally. Hopefully, that will be Nov. 2 if Powell shows some restraint. Market makers can restrain TSLA when volume is low and there's some uncertainty about the Twitter overhang, but the skies are clear now and a big move by the market should push TSLA as well, but at close to a 2X beta.

Looking at the charts above, we're seeing a big MMD for both QQQ and TSLA as a regular feature. Perhaps hedge funds are testing to see if they can generate a little fear of falling. So far, no go, but on the QQQ side we see an effect upon the day's final price. Recovery from the mandatory morning dip can either remain in the red or go green these days. Keep in mind that this pattern is an improvement in the pattern we saw when the market was just beginning to recover from the dip. Not long ago we would see exuberance with NASDAQ and TSLA that all too often led to a final hour plunge. I'll take what we have now, thank you.

News:
* Panasonic is building a factory in Kansas to supply Tesla with 2170 cells. Production of 4680 cells will be added at a later date.

yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds inched higher to 4.05% on Monday

Max pain Monday morning was listed as 225 (anyone surprised?). The strike 220 is put dominated while 225 is call dominated. Generally, option bets this week are rather light with the exception of calls at 250 strike, which exceeds 25K contracts.

Friday's options volumes

Notice the upper and lower bollinger bands quickly moving inward as the TSLA stock price is stalled in the mid 220s. The movement of the bollinger bands inward could help the market makers somewhat reduce volatility when Powell makes his statement Nov. 2.

Conditions:
* Dow down 129 (0.39%)
* NASDAQ down 114 (1.03%)
* SPY down 3 (0.72%)
* TSLA 227.54, down 0.98 (0.43%)
* TSLA volume 60.9M shares
* Oil 86.53
* IV 53.7, 12%
* Max Pain 225
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 42%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above
Still in travel mode

TSLA showed us two of its sides on Tuesday. First, both the NASDAQ and TSLA rose well into the green pre-market, but TSLA gave that extra run upward right after market open and NASDAQ/QQQ didn't. While the NASDAQ was up about 1.5% at its morning peak, TSLA topped out up more than 4%. This is a stock ready to climb when the macros finally cooperate. Moreover, TSLA yet again outperformed the NASDAQ, down only 0.28% to the NASDAQ's dip of 0.89%. The flip side is that TSLA closed for yet another day singing the old tune "stuck in the mid-220s blues".

The cause of the macro's dip on Tuesday was a favorable jobs report. The fear is, of course, that Darth Powell will use the good jobs report as a reason for keeping up his hawkish interest rate position. We'll see. One way or the other, Jerome Powell should unstick TSLA on Wednesday when he delivers the latest adjustment to the Fed's interest rate. Wall Street dearly wants to see a sign of some restraint by the Fed and will respond with enthusiasm if presented. We should hear from Powell during market hours on Wednesday. Since the rate increase is not the focus of the market this month, we may see a stronger response to guidance, which will come after the rate increase is released. Fingers crossed.

Overall, I think macro forces are moving TSLA, rather than Elon Tweets or FUD.

I write this post airborne, heading to Nevada after a 3 day visit to see a certain SpaceX rocket fly in Florida. I did see it for a few seconds above the fog as it headed for orbit. Kennedy Space Center offers a VIP viewing experience from the Saturn V/Apollo Complex, which is about as close as you can get to Pad 39A. I was really close and because of the fog didn't see much, but boy did I hear it! The roar of 27 merlin engines is not only loud, it is an intense rumbling like the earth is splitting open or something. I suspect the Saturn V was something like this. You could almost feel the energy. There's also that popping sound that I never hear in the videos. As for the booster returns, I never saw them, but the sonic booms were epic. They're not the regular BABOOMs I heard as a kid when the fighters were pushing it up. These sonic booms were distinct crack-cracks and came far enough apart to identify one booster boom from the other. Tomorrow I get a chance to actually see what I missed, but II'm not too disappointed. The experience was memorable and will add dimension to my next launch viewing.

Max pain on Tuesday was 225. The separator line between puts and calls is neatly at the transition point. Market makers pull in lots of profits when traders are buying weekly options but the stock doesn't change closing price all that much.

Monday's options volumes

Despite the stock price being above the mid bollinger band, the upper bollinger band continues to fall.

Conditions:
* Dow down 80 (0.24%)
* NASDAQ down 97 (0.89%)
* SPY down 2 (0.44%)
* TSLA 227.82, down 0.28 (0.12%)
* TSLA volume 60.9M shares
* Oil 88.40
* IV 52.8, 8%
* Max Pain 225
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: %

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Wednesday saw trading preparing for the Fed interest rate decision. At 2pm the expected 0.75% rate was released. QQQ went green upon the release of the highly expected rate increase, and TSLA, which had been trading lower than QQQ broke higher but never reached the green. I think the weakness in TSLA trading would be mostly caused by fear that a negative result could affect TSLA worse than other stocks, and perhaps some of the weakness was old fashioned manipulations.

The market's initial reaction was the assumption that this might be the final 0.75% rise needed and with future rate increases being lower, the market should be happy. The Fed said they “will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments.” In other words, the more dovish members of the Fed had their say and suggested language that reflected their views. The market was pleased.

Then came the questions and ad lib portion of the presentation and it was clear that the Fed chairman was reverting back into Darth Powell so as to absolutely emphasize that they were going to get their 2% inflation back. It was during the Darth Powell side of the presentation that the market descended back into the red, especially after he said that no pause was in sight. When the presentation ended, TSLA and the markets weren't in too bad of shape, but the market was expecting a big move one way or the other and so with down being the end note of the presentation, we saw a gross overexaggeration of the dip continue into market close.

I would not be surprised to see Wednesday's dip recovered during Thursday's trading. Additionally, I am getting rather bullish again about Tesla because the Twitter overhang is now gone and the Fed has more or less signaled that a more dovish posture is coming in the future. Of course there's always that possibility that the hedge funds can try to dip TSLA one last time. Anything is possible with this stock in the short term. Such a dip would oppose the needs of the market makers, so this late in the week we may see the MMs apply the brakes if the hedgies get too carried away.

One additional reason for my optimism is the issue of how inflation indicators will perform in the next few months.

The chart above is CPI results for the past year. Now that the CPI four month plateau prior to Oct 2021 is over, you can see that 12 month reference months are about to start running higher at a rapid pace. Each month listed is for the whole month, which is then presented in the following month. Thus, the Sept 2022 month was a bit higher than the previous three and was presented in October 2022.
Schedules for CPI and PCE reports are as follows:
* CPI: Nov 10 and Dec 13
* PCE report: Dec. 1
The next FOMC meeting of the Fed is scheduled for Dec. 13-14, thus the Fed will be able to review both the Nov CPI report plus the CPI report that comes out on the first day of the FOMC meeting. Toss in the Dec 1 PCE report and there's plenty of opportunity for the strong rise in inflation base months in late 2021 to dampen the year over year rise. I think the data is going to give the Fed an excuse to lighten the pace of future interest rate hikes.

News:
* FSD version 69.3 has been released. It is called a major release posing as a minor release by Elon. Initial responses by users are very positive.

Initially, yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds fell as the Fed suggested monetary policy will be taken into account when setting future fed rate increases. When Powell went into Darth Powell mode and emphasized continued rate increases to bring inflation back below 2%, yields jumped to about 4.1%

For the second trading day in a row, percent of selling tagged to shorts was 45%.

Max pain Wednesday morning was 227.50. This level makes sense because 225 and below are put dominated and 230 is strongly call dominated. The 220 strike puts are numerous, more than 15K, and market makers would like to bring TSLA above 220 before the day's end, but certainly before Friday.

Tuesday's options volumes

Wednesday's dip puts TSLA back below the mid bollinger band and in a position where the upper and lower bollinger bands would continue to move inward to restrain big moves.

Conditions:
* Dow down 505 (1.55%)
* NASDAQ down 366 (3.36%)
* SPY down 10 (2.51%)
* TSLA 214.98, down 12.84 (5.64%)
* TSLA volume 62.7M shares
* Oil 90.00
* IV 55.7, 21%
* Max Pain 227.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 45%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

So, why did TSLA outperform QQQ on Thursday? My first thought was that some big dog(s) were buying. After all, Ron Baron is putting on an investment conference on Friday where Elon is likely the guest speaker and perhaps there's front-running of the hype for Tesla that will come out of the conference. Looking at the anemic volume of 55.8M shares traded, though, I think probably not, but it's entirely possible that TSLA gets a bump from the conference.

Perhaps China deliveries positively affected the stock price. CPCA reported 71,704 wholesale (retail + export) in October, which is a new record for 1st month of a quarter. In truth, that number actually suggests lots of cars produced but not counted, so things are even better. What I primarily look at is production numbers and adequate demand. Giga Shanghai is cranking out the vehicles like never before and according to this Tweet by Ray4Tesla, Teslas are flooding the inspection and registration facilities lately and Shenzhen (major city) has 40K Model Ys still waiting to be delivered. I'd call that more than adequate demand in China for Q4. Nonetheless, that good news doesn't explain TSLA settling just above the red/green line and spending the day there.

The low volume but apparent inverse capping of the stock price strikes me as an effort by the market makers to keep TSLA in the green on Thursday in preparation for perhaps coaxing it up above 220 on Friday. I see this as the most likely scenario.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds spiked higher Thursday morning in reaction to the Wednesday Fed address but then settled as the day went on to close at 4.14%

Max pain Thursday morning was 225, a strike where calls just barely exceed puts. OTOH, 220 is strongly dominated by puts and the market makers will want to see a close above 220 on Friday.

Wednesday's options volumes

TSLA briefly climbed above the mid bollinger band on Thursday, getting within $6 of max pain before descending back to the red/green line. The continued trading of TSLA within a relatively narrow band is causing the upper and lower bollinger bands to squeeze inwardly, working to constrain movements below 206 or above 232.

Conditions:
* Dow down 147 (0.46%)
* NASDAQ down 182 (1.73%)
* SPY down 4 (1.03%)
* TSLA 215.31, up 0.33 (0.15%)
* TSLA volume 55.8M shares
* Oil 88.06
* IV 54.8, 18%
* Max Pain 225
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 44%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

I know, I know, you want to know what happened on Friday. Here's my best guess.

Initially I began thinking there were manipulations involved because the trading pattern was some typical of a big pushdown (great exaggeration of the macro dip, then capping into close as much as possible as the macros ran back up). I'm inclined to believe this is a partial explanation, but not a full explanation, primarily because of TSLA volume at 97.2M shares. That's nearly twice the volume as we see on a low volume, easily manipulated day, so the manipulations would be just that much harder. Further, manipulators aren't going to add 40M shares of trading to the day. Clearly there was selling pressure (which might just have been exaggerated by manipulations).

As for the market makers, we saw what appeared to be positive manipulations on Thursday in an attempt to give a pathway for the stock to climb back into the mid 220s on Friday. TSLA outperformed QQQ all day. When the big selling came on Friday, though, complete with high volume, that's not a force that the market makers are willing to fight. They would simply delta-hedge sell as the stock dipped, and thereby add to the descent.

Another theory is that Elon said something on the Ron Baron livestream that shook the market up. As far as things said about Tesla, I don't think he did any harm or any good. Elon's mentioning Teslas will become 5X more valuable once FSD is perfected makes zero impact simply because the market completely discounts such claims at this time. The news that could have moved the market regarding TSLA would have been Twitter related, especially Elon's statement that advertisers are cancelling big time and so he has to cut costs and find new revenue sources quickly. Some investors might fear a similar campaign against Tesla, but here's where they get it wrong. First, Tesla has always had deep-pocketed and inspired villains sniffing around for a means of harming the company. It hasn't happened so far. Secondly, Twitter is in a particularly vulnerable position because Madison Avenue ad companies apparently manage lots of advertising for big clients. Madison Avenue absolutely hates Elon because here's the world's most successful car company with zero advertising expenditures. This enemy of Elon has a means to hurt Twitter in the short run, but not Tesla. Any fears of Elon disenchantment sales losses migrating from Twitter to Tesla is simply overplayed.

There's a rumor of a Wall Street growth fund running into margin trouble and being liquidated. Who knows if the rumor is true, but such unexpected developments can gork TSLA's trading for a day. Thus, consider all the possible explanations above to get a feel for what might have transpired on Friday.

Tesla's stock will ultimately be fairly priced after the craziness subsides and the stock makes a big run upwards. No one knows just when that will take place. Might Q4 results be good enough to start the run? Of course, so let's look at Q4 so far. In another week we'll be halfway through the quarter. Production looks strong, with Berlin and Austin growing the fastest. If TSLA can beat analyst projected Q4 deliveries then Q4 could be the catalyst. Right now the price cut in China looks to be doing the trick, so the main focus in the final 6 weeks will be on U.S. deliveries staying adequately strong. That's a tall order with IRA bringing big subsidies after Jan 1 for Tesla buyers. I communicate regularly with someone who was going to be taking delivery in Q1 but is feeling pressure from Tesla to take delivery in Q4 instead. They likely will make the move rather than potentially having their order canceled, which would raise the base price of their vehicle and put them at the end of a growing line. On Tesla's page, Model Y (non-performance) in the U.S. is showing Dec-Fed deliveries, and Model 3 (non-performance) is showing Nov or Dec deliveries. Let's keep an eye on the situation as the quarter proceeds. Worst case scenario is that a good number of vehicles get delivered in January instead of December. That would hurt Q4 deliveries but help Q1 deliveries. We still don't know how many vehicles Tesla could deliver to Hertz and other rental car companies in December, which could be a lifesaver. Nonetheless, I've been moving Jan23 call options to Mar23 and then to Jun23. Q4 truly could be epic, we just won't know for a while and I choose the most conservative bet in the meantime.

News:
* FSD ver 10.69.3 has been released and over the past 3 days beta testers are seeing big improvements. Here's a link to the youtube videos of Whole Mars Catalogue with multiple long trips logged.

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds were stable the second day after the fed announcement, closing shy of 4.2%

Percent of selling tagged to shorts came in at 43%

Max pain was 222.50 on Friday morning.

Here's Thursday's options volumes

Max pain for next Friday is 225. You can see a very clear break between put domination and call domination.

Here's the weekly max pain chart, courtesy of @JimS

That's one long red candle, showing a nearly $20 move from high to low. Notice how the lower bollinger band came to the rescue. That's one of the benefits of having significantly squeezed bollinger bands. The low was very close to the 204 support level and was above the 200 support level.

For the week, TSLA closed at 207.47 down 21.05 from the previous Friday's 228.52. Enjoy your weekend.

Conditions:
* Dow up 402 (1.26%)
* NASDAQ up 132 (1.28%)
* SPY up 5 (1.44%)
* TSLA 207.47, down 7.84 (3.64%)
* TSLA volume 97.2M shares
* Oil 92.61
* IV 56.3, 24%
* Max Pain 222.50 for previous Friday, 225 for coming Friday
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 43%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Monday was a continuation of Friday's steep decline. We have some generalized worry about Twitter possibly affecting Tesla, but those worries cannot by themselves justify anywhere near this type of dip. Volume again was very high, 93.3M shares traded, which shows there's some real selling pressure out there.

There was also mischief afoot. I drew a line at 200 to show how very consistently some entities were capping 200. Look at what happened when QQQ took off like gangbusters in the afternoon. TSLA did not follow and in fact did a decline in the final hour. If a big investor was legitimately selling TSLA shares, even out of duress, they would pause when the macros took off and allow TSLA to start climbing. That climbing stock would draw buyers, which would increase volume (see what happened to volume with QQQ below after the climb began) and then the selling could resume but at a higher price and with more buyers. Instead, we saw an over the top effort to push TSLA lower. TMC member @viridi reported in this post that spoofing was taking place in the afternoon. Percent of selling by shorts rose to 48%, but that number doesn't really mean anything because the number could potentially have been much higher but wasn't simply because the shares to short were obtained from non-FINRA sources. Volume in the 4pm closing cross was 1.2M shares, which supports the theory that significant day shorting may have been underway.

News:
* The CPCA will release Tesla's October delivery numbers on Wednesday. Since the month often has lots of "in transit" vehicles, don't be surprised to see spin applied to interpreting the results
* Tesla Tweeted that Tesla Energy's new megafactory can produce 10K megapacks/yr., enough to replace 50 peaker plants
* Giga Berlin will apply to expand production from 500K/yr. to 1M vehicles/yr.
* Wednesday is the day after election day. The market generally goes up after an election because certainty is preferable to uncertainty. Uncertain results in key races that could tip the balance might have the opposite affect until resolved, however
* Thursday at 8:30am will be the next CPI report release date. This will be the first CPI report we see where the base from 12 months ago

Percent of selling by shorts rose to 48% on Monday, suggesting increased manipulations

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds crept above 4.2% on Monday

Max pain was 217.50 Monday morning. Notice the high number of puts at 200 strike that went into the money on Monday after some serious efforts by shorts and hedge funds

Friday's options volumes

Monday's continued price assault yielded a dip below the lower bollinger band 200.87 and the 200 support level.

Conditions:
* Dow up 424 (1.31%)
* NASDAQ up 89 (0.85%)
* SPY up 4 (0.96%)
* TSLA 197.08, down 10.39 (5.01%)
* TSLA volume 93.3M shares
* Oil 91.93
* IV 60.1, 38%
* Max Pain 217.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 48%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

This evening we learned the genesis of the steep dips that TSLA took on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday: Elon has sold about $3.9 billion of TSLA shares over the three days. Naturally, our friends the short sellers and hedge funds are only too willing to leverage any dip for their own purposes. Consider the Tweets below by Gary Black:

The good news is that we understand now why Tesla fell these last three days. It wasn't some type of crazy worry by Wall Street about Elon's owning Twitter or his political views. The big question on everybody's mind right now is whether Elon is done selling. We could really use an "all clear" Tweet from Elon regarding any further TSLA selling this year. In the absence of such a Tweet, hedgies might short-sell to front run additional selling. A bear attack or hedgie shorting could be confused for Elon selling and push the stock further down on Wednesday. Elon could complete his selling on Wednesday, give an "all clear" and the stock could recover a bit. TSLA can begin its recovery once Elon clarifies. I believe that Elon needed to file his Form 4s from Friday by Tuesday evening to be within the required timeline. He included Monday's and Tuesday's as well. So, in the absence of clarification from Elon, keep those seatbelts snug until we hear.

An alternative viewpoint could be that once investors understand that the dip was caused by an external factor that need not be repeated (Elon selling), they can see TSLA on sale at a great price, and once the confidence comes in that the dip has bottomed out (all clear is sounded, for example), then the buying should be very strong. Naturally, macros will color this reaction one way or the other.

Ultimately, the selling of TSLA stock by Elon will not affect the value of TSLA once the short-term disruptions have come and gone and TSLA has taken a nice rally to whatever point the market feels needs to be the logical top. If the market feels that the selling to complete the Twitter deal is still not completed, then we would have a Twitter overhang creating drag on the stock price. Likewise, if TSLA shareholders felt that Elon would need to sell occasionally to prop up Twitter, then that would extend an overhang, as well. Fortunately, as Gary Black describes above, sorting out the profitability of Twitter will likely not require additional funds for years to come.

News:
* Drive Tesla Canada says that Toyota sold 7 times as many vehicles as Tesla but only made one-eighth the profit per vehicle compared to Tesla

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds were nice enough to dip on Tuesday to 4.14%

Percent of selling tagged to shorts on a huge manipulation day was way down to 39%. Translation? Pros are doing the manipulations and drawing from non-FINRA sources of shares to avoid scrutiny.

Max pain Tuesday morning was 210.0. The most important discovery is in comparing the puts in the chart above with the puts in the previous day's chart. The 200s, 190s, 180s, and especially the puts below 180 strike all grew significantly by Tuesday morning. The put buying is done by longs in danger of margin calls, hedge funds and shorts actively pushing the stock down, as well as legitimate investors just trying to buy insurance against further drops. The new puts require market makers to sell shares in order to delta-hedge, which only drives the dip.

Monday's options volumes

Now that TSLA has endured its third day in a row of the Elon-selling dip, the upper and lower bollinger bands are opening wider to allow for greater volatility. Notice the extremely high volume on Monday: 127M shares traded.

Conditions:
* Dow up 334 (1.02%)
* NASDAQ up 52 (0.49%)
* SPY up 2 (0.54%)
* TSLA 191.30, down 5.78 (2.93%)
* TSLA volume 127.0M shares
* Oil 88.95
* IV 60.6, 40%
* Max Pain 210.00
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 39%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Wednesday was supposed to be the day that the market rejoiced in learning the results of the mid-term elections and the uncertainty would finally be over. Alas, Georgia won't announce the winner of its senatorial race until after the Dec. 6 runoff and each party already has 48 near-certain senate members, so this is going to be a nail-biter. Expect some degree of gridlock in Washington for the next two years, and markets generally prefer gridlock. Nonetheless, the NASDAQ closed down 2.48% on Wednesday. Futures look better for Thursday.

Elon was clearly selling on Wednesday with the day's 125.7M shares volume almost equaling Tuesday's. TSLA began the day in the green, outperforming the NASDAQ, but by 11am TSLA began its dive below the macro performance. You could see patterns similar to Friday through Tuesday's. On Friday we saw an apparent 210 target, 200 on Monday, 190 on Tuesday, and 180 on Wednesday. Levels that I earlier in the selling mistook for capping were instead changes in Elon's selling patterns to avoid unnecessarily dropping below his target. Deteriorating macros pushed TSLA below that 180ish price that held from 1:30pm until 3:30pm. If macros improved going into the close TSLA would stay level as Elon selling accelerated. Without unusual macros, I would expect a target price of 170 for Elon's selling, but I suspect we're close to the end of the selling. If you see the downward movement of the stock price toward the target price halt and then reverse into a climb for some time, that'd likely be a good sign that the selling is now complete. We probably wouldn't receive an official "all clear" until after hours.

We of course have front-running by shorts and hedgies creating much downward pressure on the stock price, likely considerably more than Elon's selling. If you compare Wednesday's max pain chart to Tuesday's you will see big put purchases in the 165-175 range. These purchases of course cause market makers to delta-hedge and this delta-hedging plus the shorting that's going on pushes the stock price lower. Once the market figures out that Elon is likely finished with his selling, I would expect a big reversal into a climb should there be clarity that Elon is done. If not, his Tweet after hours would set TSLA up for a very large gap up to begin the next trading day. Trade accordingly.

By now Elon should have sold the $5.6B worth of TSLA that Gary Black mentioned was needed to cover the Twitter purchase. Fingers crossed that the selling concludes on Thursday.

At 8:30am the CPI report comes out. If it's hot it'll be bad for the market, of course. If it's cold, the day would be a good one for Elon to complete his selling. There's also the possibility that it comes in hot and cold, ie warm compared to the previous month but cool on a year over year basis. I'm not sure how the market would digest that situation. I do know that the base month for CPI reports going forward will be a steadily rising level and at some point soon the year over year CPI comparisons is going to look favorable.

There always is an end to Elon's selling. Let's hope Thursday's the day. This video by Rob Maurer covers the math of why Elon should be close to finishing his buying (provided no big surprises with contributions from other Twitter investors. Rob also provides color on the October production numbers in China.

In the meantime, keep your eye on Tesla's substantial progress. With the company's Shanghai production of 87,706 vehicles in October, Tesla's production worldwide gives it a shot of hitting the 50% production increase of 2022 over 2021. Naturally Reuters chose to throw shade on the accomplishment, suggesting that inventory just increased by some 16,000 vehicles, which is a snarky way of saying production is greatly exceeding sales. I've been investing in Tesla since 2013 and haven't yet seen Teslas just piling up with no place to go. I suppose we'll have to get to the Q4 Production and Delivery report to set the record straight, but some growth in inventory at the end of each quarter is inevitable as Tesla unravels the wave.

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds dipped again, to 4.103% on Wednesday

Max pain for Wednesday was 205. You can see that the 200-strike is mixed puts and calls, so 205 is the first strongly call strike you encounter after wading out of the put forest.

Tuesday's options volumes

Elon's selling created a particularly long red candle on Wednesday as the macro forces made the job of selling shares just that much more unkind to TSLA's stock price.

Conditions:
* Dow down 647(1.95%)
* NASDAQ down 263 (2.48%)
* SPY down 8 (2.06%)
* TSLA 177.59, down 13.71 (7.17%)
* TSLA volume 125.2M shares
* Oil 85.75
* IV 67.5, 73%
* Max Pain 205
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 44%

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Lots to cover. Let's begin with CPI numbers. They beat all around, meaning year over year, month over month, and core inflation (excluding energy and food) came in lower than expected too. All around it was a great report. You can see the effect of this lessening inflation on the 10 yr. treasuries yields chart lower down. If the declines continue (and I think there's a good chance of it) we'll see some of that money that left for the sidelines coming back into the market with the hope that the bottom is now in. You'll see money that went chasing value stocks start migrating back to growth stocks because expectations of future inflation and interest rates has now cooled, which is really good for growth stocks.

The CPI inflation rate is determined by comparing prices in the current month (Oct 22) to prices in the month that occurred 12 months earlier (Oct 21). We had a plateau in inflation for at least 4 months during 2021 but prices started rising again in Oct 21. Thus, it is with no great surprise that we saw a bit steeper decline in inflation during Oct 22. The good news is that now through March we'll be dealing with constantly rising base months, which should make showing decreasing year over year inflation numbers much easier. Backing off, you can see that inflation peaked in June 22 and has been descending ever since. This is not what runaway inflation looks like.

Growth stocks of course flourished. The NASDAQ closed up 7.35%, with Nvidia up 14.33%, Amazon up 12.18%, and ARKK up 14.52%. So why was TSLA such a laggard compared to its peers? I believe Elon was selling. We saw high volume (132.7M shares), an apparent target of 190 (speed up selling as the stock approached 190) a slow dip after about 12:30pm when volume was falling (to keep the buyers coming by giving a better price), and an apparent end of that day's selling (3:06pm when TSLA started rising quickly). With any luck less selling will be needed on Friday, Form 4s for Wednesday-Friday selling will be filed Friday night, and we'll get an all clear Tweet from Elon saying the selling to buy Twitter is all done.

There's a lot of FUD out there right now, so don't be too gullible. Also, we know from Elon's experience at Tesla that when there's a need to fire any employees he makes dire predictions (the economy is going into recession or Twitter might look at bankruptcy if it doesn't shape up). That's standard Elon behavior and you should not let it phase you.

Have shorts been jumping aboard and pushing TSLA lower lately? Nope, the opposite is true.

According to Ihor Dusaniwsky, shorts have been covering this past week, to the tune of 4M shares. The smart ones will speed up their covering and add upward pressure to TSLA.

What the market needs is word from Elon that he is done selling. Once we receive that word, the Twitter overhang greatly disappears and if the macros continue to be positive with hopes that the Fed will moderate interest rate raises sooner rather than later, TSLA can enjoy a nice recovery until the next real or fabricated challenge pops up.

Thursday was euphoria for TSLA and the market. Friday might be a bit tougher sledding until indications of Elon finishing his selling pop up. Watch carefully.

Wow, look at the drop in yields for 10 yr. treasury bonds, down to nearly 3.8%. The bond market is saying inflation over the next 10 years just looks a whole lot less of a problem. Darth Powell, can you take a hint?

Max pain Thursday morning was 200. You can see over 30K call contracts at 200 and market makers may try to hold TSLA back should it seek to run much above 200 this week. Fortunately, next week's max pain is at 220 right now. As the market and TSLA in particular heat up, call buying will result in MM delta-hedging, which will give upward pressure on the stock price.

Wednesday's options volumes

Check out Thursday's trading pretty much undoing Wednesday's losses. Also, notice the very strong volume for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I'd be very surprised if Elon wasn't selling on Wednesday and Thursday.

Conditions:
* Dow up 1201 (3.70%)
* NASDAQ up 761 (7.35%)
* SPY up 27 (5.50%)
* TSLA 190.72, up 13.13 (7.39%)
* TSLA volume 132.7M shares
* Oil 86.80
* IV 64.3, 57%
* Max Pain 200
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 41%