Papafox's Daily TSLA Trading Charts

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

The biggest number to keep in mind for Wednesday is that percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts was a super-high 65%. Even though pre-market shorting pressure brought TSLA down to 174, the stock rallied momentarily to 178 before the sledge-o-matic was turned on. Despite that serious effort to keep TSLA under control, the stock was threatening to climb through 178 20 minutes before market close. Alas, a dip in the macros gave the pirates an excuse to amp up their shorting and TSLA closed down 0.32%, less than the Nasdaq's dip of 0.58%. Don't count TSLA out.

In recent days there have been lots of discussions about the upcoming compensation package vote for Elon. Lots of fear surrounds the issue. My view is that as long as the Board and Elon want to work things out, he will stay. I expect the vote to go in favor of his compensation package, simply because it is in the best interest of the shareholders to do so. If that fails, we wait to see if the Delaware Supreme Court will overrule the Chancery Court's ruling and allow the previous pay package to remain intact. Why would the court do so? Simply because it's in the state's best interest to do so and the chancery judge's decision went well beyond the norms of that court. In the meantime, the Board would go to work figuring what changes to the compensation package would need to be made to win a future vote. Elon has too much blood, sweat, tears and wealth invested in Tesla to pack his bags and simply leave.

News:
* The CEO of investment group CALpers says she's leaning toward voting against Elon's pay package. Previously, the firm supported the pay package, according to CNBC.
* The Limiting Factor Tweets that Tesla is switching suppliers of dry electrode machinery, supposedly because the new firm can provide greater volume of machines.

TSLA shorts were tagged with 65% of TSLA selling on Wednesday. This is close to maximum shorting and suggests extreme manipulations.

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds rose further on Wednesday, to about 4.62%, following Tuesday's weak treasury auction

Max pain Wednesday morning was 177.50, up from Tuesday despite a TSLA price dip. Just as with Tuesday, strike 177.50 is the attractive middle ground with 175 being put-dominated and 180 and above call-dominated.

TSLA's Wednesday option volumes

The option sellers are manipulating TSLA so hard that it's pretty quickly returning to that mid-170s narrow trading range after each excursion. Considering the 58%+ selling tagged to shorts EVERY day, the stock has continued buying pressure, otherwise there'd be no reason to short so heavily. One can only imagine where the stock price would be if this heavy-handed effort by the option sellers wasn't present. The good news is that once Tesla shows its cards and Wall Street sees what's coming next and how profitable it will likely be, the stock can break free and climb rapidly.

Conditions:
* Dow down 411 (1.06%)
* NASDAQ down 99 (0.58%)
* SPY down 4 (0.70%)
* TSLA 176.19, down 0.56 (0.32%)
* TSLA volume 54.4M shares
* Oil 80.10
* IV 43.7, 23%
* Max Pain 177.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 65%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 4.1M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Thursday saw a week Nasdaq that just got weaker as the day came to an end, but TSLA outperformed every stock on my stock app by closing up 1.48% while the Nasdaq was down 1.08%. Not bad. One likely cause for the optimism was Tesla preparing to register Full Self Driving in China to prepare for testing and an eventual release (covered here by Teslarati).

Naturally, the market makers were busy shorting the "sugar" out of TSLA when needed. We saw 61% of TSLA selling tagged to the shorts on Thursday. At 4am in Hawaii my phone woke me to inform that TSLA had climbed above 182. By the time I brought my laptop to life and prepared to do the sell portion of a no-cost call roll, those dang MMs had already sunk the stock below my threshold price. Oh well, I'll get more opportunities.

On Friday, watch the market reaction to the PCE inflation numbers at 8:30am. The market could give a big yawn, but if the numbers surprise to the cool side we could see a run higher which just might overpower the market makers. They'll be quite serious because it's a Friday, but I love to leave these possibilities open.

News:
* According to this Tweet, some very good EV incentives are coming to Italy

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts was 61% on Thursday, continuing the high manipulations to keep the stock price close to max pain for Friday's close.

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds dipped to around 4.54% on Thursday

Max pain Thursday morning was 177.50. That's still the happy neutral strike, with 175 put-dominated, 180 call-dominated, and 185 nearly 60K call contracts high.

Thursday's TSLA options volumes

The biggest thing to notice in the tech chart on Thursday is the volume. TSLA had been seeing declining volume to ridiculous levels as the stock price was under the thumb of the option sellers, but the stock's strength on Thursday stoked the buying. Notice how narrow the bollinger bands are at the moment.

Conditions:
* Dow down 330 (0.86%)
* NASDAQ down 184 (1.08%)
* SPY down 3 (0.66%)
* TSLA 178.79, up 2.60 (1.48%)
* TSLA volume 77.3M shares
* Oil 79.20
* IV 45.0, 37%
* Max Pain 177.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 61%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 4.6M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Welcome to the end of yet another week of surprisingly high selling tagged to shorts (24 sessions in a row at 58% or above) and TSLA closing within spitting distance of max pain (58 cents difference). Yawn.

Comparing the TSLA chart to the QQQ chart, both had some similar movements on Friday. You can see both TSLA and QQQ rise at 8:30am as the PCE inflation numbers came in right about as expected, according to CNBC. Notice the big dip of the day took TSLA below 175 for less than an hour. All the market makers needed was to close a penny above 175 to avoid paying anything for the puts, and so we saw TSLA climb and stabilize about 75 cents above 175 for most the afternoon. Alas, as the big run higher of QQQ occurred in the final hour, TSLA ran with QQQ but didn't get much higher than max pain at close. QQQ rising into the green but TSLA hitting the brakes as it approached 178 looks sketchy to me.

More telling than percent of selling tagged to shorts number was the volume at the 4pm closing cross: 12.5 million shares with an additional 2 million shares trading 5 minutes later. There are multiple possible reasons for such a high 4pm trading session, and one of them was that option sellers had a whole lot more shares to cover at day's end than 59% percent of selling tagged to shorts implies, so perhaps they had been borrowing from non-FINRA exchanges or naked shorting and wanted to be neutral before the weekend. In order to find 12 million shares to buy, the MMs would have to offer more, and so the steep rise in the TSLA price in the final half hour.

Let's hope this coming week is the week that our YouTubers get their hands on FSD v12.4 and investors get a feel for just how quickly the software is evolving. In theory, v12.5 is coming at the end of this month, so it could be a powerful 1-2 punch if the improvements are as great as advertised (5-10X reductions in interventions per release, for a 25X to 100X total improvement after both). Wouldn't that be nice.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts on Friday was 59%, extending the 58% or above streak to 24 sessions of serious manipulations

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds dipped further and closed near 4.5% on Friday

Max pain Fr9iday morning was 177.50. It's been the same setup for three days: 175 is put-dominated, 177.50 is neutral, and 180 is call-dominated, with a mega call wall at 185. TSLA's close at 178.08 was right in the sweet spot and spitting distance from max pain. Coincidence yet again? Not a chance.

Friday's TSLA options volumes

Notice stock price and max pain weaving back and forth with neither pulling too far away from the other? The ups and downs of the stock price tempt traders to make short-term bets but the house wins every hand come Friday close. Note: don't play this game in a rigged casino.

For next Friday, max pain is again 177.50. Why the big put wall at 170. Puts can be bought as a protection against a drop in the stock price, but they can also be bought to force the market makers to do some delta-hedge selling. The good news is that we don't see any tall call walls that the market makers need to protect yet for the coming week. If they were to let the stock price run higher on a Monday, this would be a good week coming up.

Sigh, until news of substance comes forth we may be at the mercy of the market maker sledgeomatic. The bollinger bands are crazy close because of the incredible lack of price movement over time. Volume remains low because no one really wants to sell right now and the sledgeomatic is controlling the upward price pressures week after week. Streaks like this never last indefinitely, though. Something always changes.

For the week, TSLA closed at 178.08, down 1.16 from the previous Friday's 179.24. Find a way to live fully and appreciate those most close to you while we wait out these doldrums.

Conditions:
* Dow up 575 (1.51%)
* NASDAQ down 2 (0.01%)
* SPY up 5 (0.91%)
* TSLA 178.08, down 0.71 (0.40%)
* TSLA volume 67.1M shares
* Oil 76.99
* IV 45.1, 37%
* Max Pain 177.50 for both May31 and Jun7
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 59%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 12.5M at 4pm then an additional 2M five minutes later

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

No plot twists on Monday, same old story. Macros were up going into market open, so we saw a TSLA pushdown into the red a couple minutes prior to market open. Alas, the usual Monday morning opening buying frenzy erupted and TSLA ran above 182. If you check out the open interest in the max pain chart, you'll see there's a tall call wall at 182.50, and TSLA at 182 didn't sit well with the market makers and they responded with the sledge-o-matic.

Picture this: me waking a bit before 4am when my TSLA at 182 price alert goes off. I struggled to open the laptop cover fast enough to sell the Jan26 calls at the same price I paid for Jun26 calls a week earlier and yet again missed the chance because the pirates ain't gonna let TSLA sit above 182 for more than a minute or two before getting pushed down with short-selling. You can see that TSLA was like a ship on a stormy sea, going up and down for an hour, and I finally (with TSLA around 181) sold the Jun26 calls I bought (fortunately for a profit) and went back to sleep. My next buy in for a call roll will be at a low enough price so that I can sell the Jan26 calls for 180 and get the zero-cost roll. The point of the strong up and down is that the market was definitely willing to price TSLA above 182, but the option sellers were repeatedly shorting the stock to keep it safely below 182.

When QQQ started descending, TSLA did too. There was the big dip for both around noon and then QQQ recovered into the green. Alas, we again saw a typical option seller trick, which was to cap TSLA around 176 for the afternoon and prevent it from running into the green with the macros. Like I said, another day, same tricks.

Fortunately, the Tesla Annual Meeting will shake things up one way or the other. My hope is we really see FSD v12.4 this week.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts came in at 58%, indicating continued very high manipulations

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds sunk again, this time to about 4.41%

A big development in the inflation scene has been this radical drop in inflation rate at truflation.com from May31 to Jun1. Until the end of May, inflation looked to be rekindling at truflation's site, but the June 1 drop was massive and gives hope for tamed inflation in the near term. The Fed was reluctant to cut rates after the jump higher in March, but the Truflation data suggests that resurgence may be coming under control again.

Max pain Monday morning was again 177.50. Strike 170 is a huge put wall that sets a likely lower boundary, 175 is put-dominated, keeping MMs unmotivated to push below, 177.50 is pretty neutral, 180 is call-dominated and 182.50 is the tall call wall of the week, which defines the top of the range that TSLA will be allowed to visit this week, as long as the option sellers are able to steer the stock price.

Monday's TSLA options volumes

Ho hum, we can watch paint dry or TSLA price action: both about as interesting until real news pries the stock price out of the fingers of the option sellers.

Conditions:
* Dow down 115 (0.30%)
* NASDAQ up 94 (0.56%)
* SPY up 0 (0.08%)
* TSLA 176.29, down 1.79 (1.01%)
* TSLA volume 68.2M shares
* Oil 74.01
* IV 46.6, 49%
* Max Pain 177.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 59%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 3.8M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

I'm not going to waste lots of time. Perhaps there was news, but a big pushdown of TSLA half an hour before market open is par for the course these days. Much of TSLA's movements were similar to QQQ movements, including a nice rise and peak about an hour before market close. From there, both TSLA and QQQ fell, but it was the same old story: QQQ stopped its descent at the red/green line and then climbed into the close, and TSLA descended through the red/green line and continued downward into market close. All those end of day manipulations require ammo and TSLA shorts were tagged with 63% of selling on Tuesday. With persistent buying pressure that requires 60%ish selling tagged to shorts on a daily basis just to hold the price level, market makers prefer to have some wiggle room below 180 and especially below 182.50 for Friday's close.

China insurance data for Teslas registered in the past week show 15,000, which keeps TSLA nearly on track with 2023 China insured vehicles, according to this x.com chart by Roland Pircher

The big FUD story of the day was a claim Elon is pulling Nvidia H100 chips away from Tesla and sending to X and Xai instead. He offered a reasonable explanation here.

The fall in 10 yr treasury bond yields continues with a close near 4.33% on Tuesday. Various economic weaknesses have been causing the dip.

Max pain Tuesday morning was 177.50. Not much change from Monday: 170 is tall put wall, 175 is weakly put-dominated, 177.50 is the sweet spot, 180 and 185 are growing call walls.

Tuesday's TSLA options volumes

Zzzzzzzzz

Conditions:
* Dow up 140 (0.36%)
* NASDAQ up 28 (0.17%)
* SPY up 1 (0.11%)
* TSLA 174.77, down 1.52 (0.86%)
* TSLA volume 59.8M shares
* Oil 72.90
* IV 47.4, 53%
* Max Pain 177.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 63%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 3.3M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Let's get the stock price movement out of the way so that we can talk about the exciting stuff. Nasdaq had a great day, closing up 1.96%. Given TSLA's beta of about 2.4X, TSLA should have been up nearly 4.8%, given no news. Instead, it climbed a pathetic 0.13%. While I had hoped that the market makers would tire of shorting the sugar out of TSLA for over a month now, they clearly are in the catbird seat at a moment and not willing to budge an inch.

Take a look at TSLA's chart above. TSLA was trading positively (along with the macros) in pre-market, but of course the pirates delivered a Mandatory Morning Dip on open because they could see the macros were strong and rising and the best defense is a good offense. The reason for the macro strength is, to some extent at least, optimism that the Fed is now more likely to lower rates after recent economic data. If rates are lowered, few benefit as much as automobile manufacturers, thus compounding the inequity. The MMD strikes me as a pure manipulation move. In earlier days, a strong climb of the Nasdaq would often lead to TSLA's cap being broken sometime in the afternoon and TSLA gaining some lost ground on the macros. That didn't happen on Wednesday because I think the combination of the overhang of the June 13 Elon compensation package vote and the relentless day-shorting gives the option sellers low volume and all the power they need to steer the stock price. This too shall pass, but it really does illustrate why TSLA can trade so horizontally for long stretches when it should instead be following the market upwards.

The May European delivery numbers are in and Roland Pircher's x.com chart shows TSLA about 13% behind 2023 at the end of May. Keep in mind that we did see a big disruption of shipping with the Red Sea issue and disruptions to manufacturing in Berlin as well. Keep in mind, too, that 2023 was a huge jump in European deliveries over previous years.

To me, the day's big news is Elon's Tweet about FSD 12.4.1. Unless problems are found, our usual YouTubers will be showing how well this software works, at last. The really encouraging news is Elon predicting that once the various glitches are dispensed with, FSD should be able to go a year between required interventions. I know that Elon has a reputation for being overly optimistic about FSD, but now that neural nets are doing the code writing and Tesla has a sugarload of Nvidia H100 chips, the timing of major improvements every month or so may be reality. Can't wait to see. Don't you realize that a massive shift has occurred? Instead of arguing that FSD is another 5 years away, we might soon be arguing whether FSD is another 5 months away. The constant fretting about whether Tesla deliveries are up 10% this quarter or not goes out the window when unsupervised FSD becomes reality. I also hear the chuckle of a robot laughing softly in the background.

News:
* Tesla Tweeted that Austin has just built their 50 millionth 4680 cell. So far the 4680 team is staying ahead of cybertruck production and creating room for cybertruck production to keep growing. Member @RHJP posted previous 4680 milestones here.
* Ron Baron gave the best summary of all why he's supporting Elon's compensation package: "You’re not voting on whether Elon should be given his compensation package. You’re voting on whether to renege on a deal where he held up his side. Why would you want to renege on a deal with your MVP?"

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts came in at 62% again, a super-high number indicating continued intense manipulations

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds continue to fall, this time to below 4.3% on Wednesday, on expectations growing for a Fed rate cut

Max pain Wednesday morning continued to be super-glued to 177.50. Nothing much has changed so far this week. What did change is the 6/14 expiration max pain dipped from 180 to 177.50. The 6/21 expiration is a large volume expiration and it remains at 180 for the moment.

Wednesday's TSLA options volumes

Those upper and lower bollinger bands can't squeeze much more narrowly as the option sellers keep their thumbs on the TSLA stock price.

I better get to bed!

Conditions:
* Dow up 96 (0.25%)
* NASDAQ up 331 (1.96%)
* SPY up 6 (1.19%)
* TSLA 175.00, up 0.23 (0.13%)
* TSLA volume 57.7M shares
* Oil 74.53
* IV 48.2, 59%
* Max Pain 177.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 62%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 4.5M shares plus 1.1M shares 3 minutes later

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above (note, the movements look abrupt because the scale is REALLY small. Not much movement, really)

TSLA left most other stocks behind on Thursday and gained 1.68%. In contrast, Nasdaq and QQQ closed down slightly. Let's consider why. My feeling is that we had a bunch of good news recently. FSD v12.4.1 and two more versions are coming. China has shown a welcoming stance toward FSD, Ron Baron went on CNBC Wednesday and not only gave a knockout reason why Elon's compensation should be approved, he laid out why investors should be buying TSLA right now. Elon gained halo effect after the mostly-successful Starship flight early in the day. Retail bought the opening and the pirates responded with a Mandatory Morning Dip. Ah, another day beginning.

Pardon my putting my manipulation glasses on, but the day looked classic. After an MMD of a couple bucks, traders started buying the dip with plans to sell at the higher end of the narrow range. Investors also showed up for the discount. Alas, you see the typical downward slope, followed by a run higher, and then repeat and repeat. By around noon TSLA was trading level barely in the green in a classic capping profile. Around 12:30pm the cap got defeated and up TSLA went. Naturally, we saw volume increase to as high as 200-400K/min at times as algos jumped in for buying as well. TSLA topped out about 34 cents below 180 and then we saw intensity dial turned up on the sledge-o-matic to get TSLA below 179 (and comfortably away from 180). On a personal note, I bought a bunch of DITM calls for rolling after TSLA took its morning dip and sold my earlier expiration calls 3-4 hours later once TSLA exceeded 177. Hey, if the MMs are going to play this narrow trading window game, we might as well benefit from it.

The day looked like classic manipulations but when I checked the percent of selling tagged to shorts, it came in at a low 49%. After nearly 30 session at 58% or above, this was a surprise, especially given the apparent manipulations on Thursday. One idea is that the pirates either borrowed primarily from non-FINRA exchanges or engaged in naked shorting to get both the manipulations and the low number.

I've been looking weeks ahead during this 58%+ shorting spree, and there's not a specific week that suggests the shorting was heavily necessary any more. For example, for the Jun14 options expirations, max pain is now down to 175 (from 180) but for the large Jun21 expiration max pain remains at 180. The severity of the effort doesn't make sense for any of these weeks. Another idea is that Elon has haters out there with big money and some may be helping hold the stock price level while the market was climbing in the hope of creating discontent in investors that translates into a "no" vote for Elon's compensation package. If that's the motive, we could judge by when the heavy manipulations actually end. Let's just keep an open mind going forward.

The good news is that FSD v12.4.1 is coming as soon as this weekend, followed by major improvement versions v12.5 and v12.6. Cybertruck turned out to be a hit and production is ramping. There's a good chance the overhang from the Elon compensation issue gets resolved on June 13, and we have Robotaxi Day on Aug 8 to look forward to.

Percent of selling tagged to TSLA shorts plunged all the way to 49% on Thursday. Was it a real reduction in shorting or a switch to naked shorting and borrowing from non-FINRA exchanges? The TSLA chart suggests there was still plenty of shorting going on.

Yields on 10 year treasury bonds leveled off near 4.3%

Max pain Thursday morning was 175. Strike 170 is an Everest-high put wall which MMs will protect against. 175 is slightly put-dominated, 177.50 slightly call dominated, and then 180 and 182.50 are call walls that we'll see efforts to protect on Friday

Thursday's TSLA options volumes

Yawn, here we are, still in the valley of the upper 170s.

Conditions:
* Dow up 78 (0.20%)
* NASDAQ down 15 (0.09%)
* SPY down 0 (0.00%)
* TSLA 177.94, up 2.94 (1.68%)
* TSLA volume 69.6M shares
* Oil 75.77
* IV 49.2, 64%
* Max Pain 175
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 49%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 1.8M at 3:52 then 4.4M at 4:00pm

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

On Friday TSLA closed 2 pennies below max pain. For more than a month now, volume has been low and the overhang from the Elon compensation situation has given option sellers the flexibility to drive the stock price wherever they needed it (albeit with 60% or higher selling tagged to shorts on most days, however). I personally think the option sellers would have been comfortable with any close between 175 and 177.50. The oversized pushdown after 2pm suggests this. Why did we see such a strong recovery into close, though? I think both traders and legitimate investors were taking advantage of the "discount" and some traders wanted to be loaded a bit for the Monday morning buyers exuberance opening.

I decided not to roll any calls over the weekend because Thursday's vote could cause a big swing one way or the other. Overall, I expect Elon's pay package to be approved, and my optimism increased slightly by this Tweet by Elon that says retail investors have been voting in favor of the pay package by about 90%. We simply can't consider it a done deal, however, even with retail holding about 50% of shares allowed to vote, because we know that institutional investors will have a high percentage of voting and retail's percentage will be less.

FSD v12.4.1 is being tested by our YouTube regulars, and now we know it is real. There are a few issues yet that need to be corrected in a future version before we'll be driving 12.4. Elon agrees. Can't wait, though. Hands free (no nag) driving will be impressive. Improvements are such a delight. Up until v12.3.6 my Model 3 would choose the leftmost of 2 left turn lanes when there was an immediate right turn needed. You should have seen me grin when it smartly took the rightmost of the left turn lanes for the first time (even though the line was much shorter in the other turn lane). We're going to get there. I'm not expecting a failure to take the leftmost lane at a lane split entering a certain town from the freeway is going to be fixed until v12.5 (when highway and street driving fully integrated into one stack). I'm hoping to see quicker merges when the lane I'm in is going to end. My list is getting shorter and shorter and I love using FSD.

News:
* Tesla objects to the $5.6B proposed payout to Delaware case attorneys. We have also seen a top law firm hired on behalf of Tesla shareholder Amy. That law firm will be working to reduce the payment to the Delaware case attorneys.

Percent of selling tagged to shorts was 51%, no longer in the super-high numbers but substantial all the same.

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds jumped up to 4.43% on Friday after May payrolls topped expectations (according to CNBC). The Fed is meeting next week but is expected to keep rates unchanged

The Fed was ready to cut rates earlier this year but you can see that in March we saw a jump that was also reflected in the truflation.com data. Fortunately, June is looking really benign so far for inflation.

Max pain Friday morning was 177.50 and market close price was 177.48. Any questions?

Friday's TSLA options volumes

In case you doubt that stock price is being manipulated to close near max pain or at least above/below the at risk put or call, check out the chart above. For four weeks this stock has been going nowhere while option sellers cash in their earnings every Friday. Chart courtesy of @JimS

For this coming Friday, max pain is 175. Strike 175 is currently call-dominated and so the initial target would be a penny below 175. With lots of news coming this week, the "glue the price to the max pain" cakewalk will soon be over.

With the bollinger bands pulled in so tightly, they're going to work to constrain whatever news comes out of the Tesla Annual Meeting on Thursday, June 13.

For the week, TSLA closed at 177.48, down 60 cents from the previous Friday's 178.08. Hoping your weekend was a good one, spent with those who warm your heart.

Conditions:
* Dow down 87 (0.22%)
* NASDAQ down 40 (0.23%)
* SPY down 1 (0.12%)
* TSLA 177.48, down 0.48 (0.26%)
* TSLA volume 56.2M shares
* Oil 75.70
* IV 49.6, 66%
* Max Pain 177.50, and 175 for both May14 and May21
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 51%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 3.4M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

We failed to see much of a Monday morning buyers exuberance this week. My guess is we would have seen a good one if FSD v12.4.1 reviews had been sterling, but instead we got praise for hands free, then a wait and see attitude as Tesla buckles down to fix various shortcomings before a larger release. I think our v12.4 upward bump is still coming, only later, because it does appear there are some very solid improvements. For one, Elon says it'll have 5-10X decrease in interventions once the bugs are taken care of. How does he know? Tesla has 20,000 FSD computers that are used for testing new software releases. Each computer reacts to a virtual drive, and Tesla can score the reliability of the software. I think that part is very real. We've also seen some very cool new behaviors such as this one that @hobbes posted on Monday and the one in the post just below it. In the first video, the Tesla expertly stops in a construction zone for a man doing hand signals and holding a sign. It proceeds once the go ahead is given. In the next video, the Tesla deviates around a piece of garbage on the road, even though the camera can no longer see it. I think desire for FSD 12.4 will grow as new behaviors make their way to social media sites.

Nonetheless, there wasn't buyer exuberance at open and after a 10am blip into the green, TSLA started down a rather linear path to get below 174 shortly after 2pm. The combination of a rise in the macros and TSLA being near the low end of the trading range after 2:30pm sent TSLA higher for over half an hour, but with that exception you just didn't see much correlation between QQQ movements and TSLA movements on Monday. Volume was a super-low 49.6M shares, which made it easy for those doing the shorting to get tagged with 57% of TSLA selling on Monday. A heft 5.9M shares traded hands in the 4pm closing cross. Keep in mind that 4pm minute's volume was noticeably higher than 10% of the entire day's TSLA trading. Manipulations? Need you ask? Option sellers want TSLA between 172.50 and 175 on Friday's close and Monday's effort put TSLA in the sweet spot. Elon getting his pay package restored on Thursday could definitely upset the price-manipulations apple cart. Fingers crossed.

TSLA selling tagged to shorts rose to 57% on Monday, indicating renewed effort to place downward pressure on the stock

Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds rose to 4.7% on Monday

Max pain Monday morning was 175. Since 175 is call oriented, that gives the market makers incentive to push TSLA below 175. OTOH, strike 172.50 is put-dominated and so the range from 172.50 to 175 is the sweet spot for the manipulators at the moment.

Monday's TSLA options volumes

How narrow can the bollinger bands go? These narrow bands will help rein in upward or downward trading pressures after the results of Thursday's Elon compensation and move from Delaware votes.

Conditions:
* Dow up 69 ( 0.18%)
* NASDAQ up 59 (0.35%)
* SPY up 2 (0.31%)
* TSLA 173.79, down 3.69 (2.08%)
* TSLA volume 49.6M shares
* Oil 77.89
* IV 51.1, 72%
* Max Pain 175
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 57%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 5.9M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

I see Tuesday as day two of the pushdown to position TSLA for Thursday's annual meeting. Let me explain. Many pundits state that Elon will win the compensation vote on Thursday. If that does indeed happen, the stock price will rise. If you are an option seller, where would you like the stock price to be before it rises Thursday after hours and Friday? I suggest that since strike 170 is heavily put-dominated, the market makers don't want to set it up much less than that. If TSLA does indeed rise after the vote is counted, strike 180 is a call wall and 185 is a very tall call wall that the option sellers want to protect.

Why do I think that investors are expecting Elon's comp plan to pass? I explain the particulars below the max pain chart, but basically we have a much higher percentage of call options expiring Friday, compared to puts. Investors are voting with their dollars that Thursday will have good news. When call sales exceed put sales, market makers normally buy TSLA shares to Delta-hedge the calls they sold. This hedge buying places upward pressure on the stock price. Instead, we saw TSLA sink on Tuesday, and I think we're witnessing a manipulative downward adjustment to the share price in anticipation of Thursday's vote. Percent of selling tagged to TSLA shorts was up to 60% again, and who knows what percentage of the short borrowing took place on non-FINRA exchanges (and thus is not counted in the 60% number.

Much discussion on Tuesday centered around Elon's negative comments about Apple planning to integrate a link to open-AI features in future iphone releases. It's fuel for discussion but I don't think his comments will move the TSLA price one way or the other.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts rose back to 60% on Tuesday, indicating LOTS of manipulations

Yields on 10 year treasury bonds dipped to around 4.4% on Tuesday

Max pain Tuesday morning was 177.50. You can see that 170 is put-dominated and 175 and above are call-dominated. TSLA stopping its descent close to 170 makes sense from an option seller standpoint. Normally, we see the put/call ratio at about 0.75, meaning that puts are only about 75% as plentiful as call contracts. At the moment, the Put/Call ratio is about 0.67%, meaning that puts are a full one third less plentiful than calls this week. Clearly the option buyers are betting on a good Thursday annual meeting, with Elon getting his comp package. With relative call purchasing going on, the market makers would normally be buying shares to delta-hedge the calls they've sold, and you'd see upward pressure on the stock price. I think what we're seeing right now is manipulations designed to put TSLA in a position near the lower bollinger band so that if it rises after Thursday's activities, it might still remain below the 180 call wall and the big call wall of 185. It's all positioning for Friday's trading.

Tuesday's TSLA options volumes

Volume crept up a bit on Tuesday as discounts were offered on share prices in the afternoon. TSLA closed 28 cents above the lower bollinger band. So far, it looks very normal for the pirates when a vote is leaning towards positive for the stock price.

Conditions:
* Dow down 121 (0.31%)
* NASDAQ up 151 (0.88%)
* SPY up 1 (0.24%)
* TSLA 170.66, down 3.13 (1.80%)
* TSLA volume 64.3M shares
* Oil 78.36
* IV 53.7, 81%
* Max Pain 177.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 60%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 4.2M shares

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Friday began with a nice bump upwards at 8:30am for both TSLA and QQQ as the CPI numbers came in cool. TSLA showed a modest increase relative to QQQ's and then was walked down into market open. We even saw some red during the Mandatory Morning Dip but with TSLA sitting at the bottom of the recent trading range and with Nasdaq rising, TSLA started climbing and never looked back. By about noon TSLA hit 179 and since the option sellers didn't want all those 180 calls to move into the money we saw calling to keep TSLA below 179.

In late afternoon, still during market hours, the Fed announced that no rate cuts were coming this month but likely one would come this year. Mr. Market wasn't thrilled with that news, and TSLA plus QQQ dipped a bit. In after hours trading, QQQ saw a nice climb but that climb was not reproduced with TSLA.

Let's look at the numbers. Nasdaq climbed 1.53% on Wednesday. Multiply by TSLA's beta of 2.4 and TSLA should have climbed about 3.7%. TSLA gained 3.88% but keep in mind that Tesla as a company stands to gain more as a company than most in the Nasdaq. First, decreased interest rates will cause more Tesla vehicles to sell. Secondly, Tesla is a growth company, and when analysts model future earnings, they are discounted by the inflation rate to determine present value.

I think the option sellers did far more shorting on Wednesday than the 46% number (see below) suggests. In order to help cover the shorting (or naked shorting), we saw a hefty 7.8M shares trading during the 4pm hour.

News:
* ARKK issues $2600 price target for TSLA in 2029. Elon replied "Extremely challenging, but achievable" to this target

* Tesla has ongoing insight into the votes to be announced on Thursday, and both questions are going to pass, according to this Wednesday afternoon Tweet from Elon. The big question is that if passage of these votes is going to remove a cloud and push the share price higher, what is going to happen on Thursday, now that this Tweet is public news?

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts dropped to 46% on a day with heavy apparent shorting. Do I believe day-shorting declined on Wednesday? Nope. It almost certainly went up, but borrowing would have concentrated on non-FINRA exchanges to keep suspicions down.

After the CPI numbers came out cool, yields on 10 yr treasury bonds dipped, but they rose a bit after the Fed comments about likely only one rate cut in 2024. Yields closed near 4.31%.

Max pain on Wednesday dipped to 175, which is now call-dominated. Come Thursday and Friday, market makers will try to minimize the damage on just how high TSLA rises. They likely lack the horsepower to defend 180 and 185 any more this week.

Wednesday's TSLA options volumes

After Wednesday's move, TSLA is now in the middle of very narrow bollinger bands. Notice the increased volume of the past few days. We'll see TSLA bust through the upper bollinger band and it can stay above the upper bb for 2 days before there's pressure to come back within.

Conditions:
* Dow down 35 (0.09%)
* NASDAQ up 265 (1.53%)
* SPY up 4 (0.82%)
* TSLA 177.29, up 6.63 (3.88%)
* TSLA volume 89.8M shares
* Oil 78.34
* IV 52.5, 77%
* Max Pain 175
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 46%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 7.8M shares

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

With the cat out of the bag that both Elon's comp package and the move to Texas had enough support to be approved, TSLA rose above 190 in pre-market trading and also in morning trading, but a dip in the macros of about half a percent gave the option sellers license to short the "sugar" out of TSLA to get it below 185 and then to cap it there to protect the 185-strike calls that expire on Friday. Percent of selling tagged to shorts was 51%, but I suspect in reality it was higher, judging from the price action. A half-percent dip of the macros is an excuse, not a reason, for TSLA to lose 4.5% from morning to market close. A massive 7.4M shares trading during the 4pm closing cross is an indication of just how much day-shorting was required to control TSLA's price.

Initially, TSLA showed some volatility when the Annual Meeting began and the stock rose a bit while Chair Robin was speaking. It didn't make as big of moves as you'd expect when Tesla announced the comp package and Texas move had been approved. When Elon started talking and giving good news, the stock price just did a slow decrease. I watched specifically when Elon showed that Tesla Energy should grow 200-300% in 2024. Nothing. I strongly suggest that the option sellers were working the after-hours trading carefully to prevent any price increase from signaling good news for investors.

It's anyone's guess whether the pirates can keep TSLA below 185 for Friday's close. They want to, but news would normally pull TSLA higher, especially with this big black cloud now removed. I'll be watching carefully and maybe even being willing to buy some calls in the afternoon to then roll during Monday morning's buyer exuberance spurt.

Overall, I'm happy with the annual meeting and there's much to unpack, particularly in Elon's responses to some excellent shareholder questions. More comments coming from me this weekend.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts rose to 51% on Thursday but I suspect short manipulations were intense, judging by the price action

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds dipped further to abut 4.25% on Thursday as data continues to suggest inflation is going to subside

Max pain Thursday morning was 177.50 as TSLA rose to nearly 90. The market makers and other option sellers wanted TSLA below the tall call wall of 185 and with enough muscle managed to pry it below 185. If volumes are high enough on Friday, they may not be so successful.

TSLA's Thursday options volumes

TSLA broke 190 but the candle for Thursday is black because the option sellers were shorting the "sugar" out of the stock in order to salvage their Friday expiration options, particularly the 185-strike calls. Notice the building volume for the past 3 trading sessions.

Conditions:
* Dow down 65 (0.17%)
* NASDAQ up 59 (0.34%)
* SPY up 1 (0.20%)
* TSLA 182.47, up 5.18 (2.92%)
* TSLA volume 115.5M shares
* Oil 78.62
* IV 52.2, 77%
* Max Pain 177.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 51%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 7.4M shares

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Check out the pre-market trading on Friday where TSLA was threatening to climb above 186 and QQQ was in the red. We saw a classic mandatory morning dip pulled off by the option sellers that not only brought TSLA below 185 (not too surprising) but below the smaller call wall at 180 as well. Look how expertly any dip in QQQ was hugely exaggerated in TSLA (see the noon dip) but then as volume declined in afternoon TSLA was pushed lower even though QQQ was rising. That type of effort required a might 65% TSLA selling tagged to shorts. Well, at least we know this continued manipulation attack on TSLA is about maximizing profits for option sellers and not a concerted effort to negatively affect the annual meeting vote results. Expect the full-court press to continue through the coming week because June 21 is a hefty monthly options expiration.

So, with insane manipulations afoot lately, where does this leave TSLA shareholders? I think in a very positive position over the coming year. Here's why. The "Elon is leaving" black cloud has evaporated now. Elon is not only staying, but with the upcoming move to Texas for incorporation, Tesla's board will be working on his new compensation package. That package will include eye-opening high market cap hurdles that will of course seem unachievable to most of Wall Street, but not to many retail investors and to ARK Invest. Those lusciously-high future targets will inspire other retail investors to jump in after they witnessed Elon's ability to hit the 2018 comp package goals and there's reason to believe (with robotaxi and Optimus coming) that he can do it again.

Here's where the trading gets fun for us, though. Once it becomes clear that Tesla's revenues are heading upward, the stock price will as well. There will be too much buying pressure for the pirates to hold it at max pain any more. Once the stock price starts climbing you'll see various shorts getting out and contributing to the climb. Moreover, institutional investors hold relatively light positions in TSLA compared to in past years. As TSLA starts climbing, funds will no longer want to be underweight in TSLA, compared to the S&P500, and so they will be buying in. The question is who will be selling? Retail investors have gone through Purgatory with this long slump in TSLA's stock price, and they're focused on holding for the 10X. Most are not ready to sell for a simple 50%, 100%, or 200% gain. Thus, TSLA is going to have to rise quite a bit for the institutional investors to load up and another steep rise becomes inevitable as rising profits confirms that TSLA needs to be priced higher. Looking forward to it!

So, what is the status of Tesla's profits at the moment? The company is getting by even though headwinds abound. Let's look at the headwinds that should go away in 2025:
* Interest rates: Expect the Fed to cut rates many times in 2025 as inflation is tamed. Lower interest rates mean lower monthly payments for vehicle buyers
* Model 3: Lots of Model 3 owners wish to upgrade to the new Highland version. It's suspension and road noise are substantially improved. The problem is that (except for performance) the $7500 IRA incentive is not available until batteries are manufactured in the U.S., and that event is likely in 2025 as new factories by Tesla's suppliers come online in the U.S. Bottom line: many owners are holding off on upgrades until 2025. If Trump wins the presidency, which is looking more probable in recent months, he cannot simply wave a wand and see a previous law rescinded. The GOP would need to hold a majority of both houses for that to happen.
* Model Y: Elon recently said that Model Y's upgrade isn't happening in 2024. Expect Juniper to arrive in 2025. With IRA credits available, they'll sell well because nobody will be sitting on the fence waiting for the newer version any longer.
* Cybertruck: We could see a 125K annual run rate as 2024 comes to an end. That's enough volume to get economies of scale and see Cybertruck contribute to the bottom line.
* Lower cost vehicles: Elon has said in late 2024 or early 2025 we'll see production begin on the new lower-cost (sub $30K?) partially unboxed, partially manufactured on 3 and Y assembly line vehicles. The lull between product releases will be over. Moreover, Tesla is now expanding more aggressively into South America, creating new markets to bump up the sales while we wait for interest rates to come down.
* Tesla energy: With growth of over 200% in 2024, Tesla energy will register as a significant contributor to the bottom line. It'll grow in 2025. Tick, tick, tick.
* Full-self-driving and robotaxi: August 8, 2024, could be a buy the news event as Tesla reveals the design of the new robotaxi and then likely expands upon timeline and details for the robotaxi network. If enough details are given, and is FSD is looking very strong by then, then analysts can start modeling robotaxi revenues into Tesla's future income stream.

As you can see, lots of headwinds turn into tailwinds in 2025.

We learned some interesting news about FSD at the annual meeting. Elon states that each big update (12.4 to 12.5 to 12.6) will be bringing a 10X decrease in necessary interventions. What about glitches such as the lane-changing in 12.4, though? I suspect we'll see a new 12.4 version released within a couple weeks with that glitch (and some others) remedied. Check out Chuck Cook's video on v12.4 at his dreaded unprotected left turn location. Chuck was pleased with 12.4 on this difficult exercise. Fixing this particular challenge shows how well Tesla can focus on fixing a specific issue on future releases using neural nets to modify the code.

I'm bullish with where Tesla is heading in the next couple years. HODLing.

By the way, I recognized Friday's trading as being a severe manipulation. TSLA is inherently a more valuable stock after the vote, and so Friday afternoon I bought a few more call options for rolling during Monday morning's buyer exuberance, if it materializes. If not, I'm waiting it out until I get the bump of a few dollars I need to roll those calls to a later expiration date. I figure it will happen by August 8, at the latest.

By the way, if you think EVs have stalled in sales in comparison to ICE vehicles, think again. From Bloomberg

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts jumped all the way up to 65% on Friday, indicating extremely heavy shorting

Yields on 10 year treasury bonds closed near 4.23% after a week of declines encouraged by recent weak economic and cool inflation data

Max pain Friday morning was 177.50. After an insane level of shorting that forced TSLA to decline immediately after good news from the annual meeting, TSLA closed at 178.01, just 51 cents above max pain. I know, I know, just coincidence /s

TSLA's Friday options volumes

The flattening of TSLA max pain and closing price couldn't get much more level over a 4 week timespan than this. Chart by @JimS

Here's an important reason for the heavy handed shorting we've been seeing lately. The June 21 options expiration is a big monthly expiration with max pain of 175. Strikes 180 and above are call-dominated and for heaven's sake, the MMs don't want investors thinking that anything good was revealed at Thursday's annual meeting.

TSLA closed right in the middle of the bollinger bands and 51 cents above max pain on Friday.

For the week, TSLA closed at 178.01, up 53 pennies from the previous Friday's 177.48. Pricewise, the week was a dud, but in terms of setting TSLA up for a massive gain in the future, the week was a grand one. Hoping you shared the weekend in joyful fashion with the ones who most matter to you.

Conditions:
* Dow down 58 (0.15%)
* NASDAQ up 21 (0.12%)
* SPY up 0 (0.06%)
* TSLA 178.01, down 4.46 (2.44%)
* TSLA volume 81.3M shares
* Oil 78.45
* IV 45.5, 40%
* Max Pain 177.5 for Jun14, 175 for Jun21
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 65%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 4.7M shares

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Congrats TSLA longs, TSLA closed up 5.3% on Monday versus the Nasdaq's climb of less than 1%. What caused the spike? I would say that Friday's dip in TSLA after the annual meeting was an epic short-fest that many traders saw through. Max pain for this coming Friday jumped from 175 to 180 even though TSLA declined on Friday. You can see big increases in calls at 180, 185, and other strikes and since the Monday morning max pain is figured on Friday's trading, those calls were purchased at the end of last week. Normally, heavy call buying would result in lots of delta hedge TSLA buying by the option sellers, which should push TSLA higher, but the opposite occurred.

And so Monday's pre-market trading began with the usual pushdown going into market open (designed to scare away the traders). Buyers were waiting, though, and TSLA ran higher right after market open. Notice that TSLA leveled near 180 for about an hour as the market makers attempted to protect those calls and then the capping failed and TSLA ran above 185, where it again was capped until about 1pm. Alas, the Nasdaq went into beast mode Monday afternoon and all the market makers horses and all the market maker's men couldn't put the cap back together again. You can see one linear walkdown of the stock price between about noon and 1pm and then another between about 2:30pm through 3:00pm as the sledge-o-matic was turned on but the strength of the macros didn't allow the pushdowns to progress far. At day's end TSLA was up over 5% and the stock price stood $2.44 above the massive 185-strike call mountain. It couldn't happen to a more deserving band of pirates.

So, what happens going forward this week? Normally, I'd say that with weaker macros than we saw on Monday the MMs stand a good chance of getting TSLA below 185 because they are going to be trying very hard. As it turns out, we're seeing some good news coming out in the form of a Tesla announcement that the Model 3 Long Range AWD vehicles now qualify for the full $7500 federal subsidy at purchase date. That brings a refreshed Model 3 with 341 mile range and v4 autopilot hardware below $40K. With a one month ability to transfer autopilot, I suggest we're going to see LOTS of previous owners upgrading their Model 3s in the very near future. The pricing creates a problem for Model 3 RWD, but Tesla will find a solution, including perhaps shifting to more Long Range production of a vehicle with higher margins. Bullish.

Also adding to the positivity is an upcoming Tesla Master Plan 4. We're going to see the next book in Tesla's evolution and it will indeed open your eyes. Add to this the ability to resolve Elon's 2018 compensation package and we're going to be seeing the next comp package for Elon, which will likely seem every bit as amazingly unachievable as the 2018 package did in its day. The sum of all these upcoming events will be a shift from current roadblocks to massive revenue and profits ahead, and some on Wall Street will realize that they need to grab this comet by the tail and hang on if they are to have any hope of keeping up with the S&P500 growth. Don't miss it.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts soared to 66% as the option sellers cranked up the sledge-o-matic to minimize Monday's damage to their earnings this week.

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds closed near 4.27% on Monday

Max pain Monday morning had risen all the way up to 180. The reason? Traders had been buying call options on Friday, which helps explain the heavy shorting on Friday! Strike 180 was call-dominated as the day began, but 185 had over 62K call contracts open with few puts, and so the market makers had a conniption as TSLA rose and stayed above. No doubt they're looking for opportunities to bring the price below 185 before Friday's close. As for the Mt. Everest sized call wall at 200, the option sellers would rather tie their grandmothers to a railroad track than let TSLA cross 200 this week.

Monday's TSLA options volumes

TSLA bumped right through the upper bollinger band and the 180 call wall and the 185 call mountain on Monday.

Conditions:
* Dow up 189 (0.49%)
* NASDAQ up 168 (0.95%)
* SPY up 4 (0.80%)
* TSLA 187.44, up 9.43 (5.30%)
* TSLA volume 108.9M shares
* Oil 80.22
* IV 48.2, 61%
* Max Pain 180
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 66%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 10.3M shares

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Anyone surprised by the day's trading? A pushdown below 185 would have been the most likely scenario and with Nasdaq pretty much flat, it happened. I had hoped that news of Model 3 LR receiving the U.S. $7500 tax credit might have juiced the stock a bit, but in retrospect the media does little to spread positive news that's beneficial for Tesla and so it was just us Teslaholics who were getting excited. Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts was a very high 63% with a hefty 5.8M shares trading hands at 4pm. The pirates were working the stock hard to get it below 185 and keep it there this week.

Wednesday is a trading holiday and so we only have two more trading days this week. Right now the market makers don't want TSLA below 180 (it's put dominated now) and they certainly don't want it above the tall call wall at 185, and so the most likely scenario for the week is a close between 180 and 185. Let's hope it's closer to 185. Here's why. TSLA has to fight the option sellers for any gains these days. The way we get lasting price increases is for the max pain to rise. Max pain is 180 for June 28 but 180 is just a small call-domination and so with any luck TSLA closes nearer to 185 this week, runs above 185 on Monday of next week, and we see the market makers shift their manipulations to keeping TSLA below 190 or whatever is the new target. Slow climb is better than no climb. Q2 may not be a catalyst, but as the year progresses the headwinds likely start turning into tailwinds and if 2024 ships more vehicles than 2023 the worst is over. That's just looking at Tesla as a car company. The reality is that Tesla Energy is expanding quickly and FSD is evolving to become real. Teslas will sell quickly when unsupervised FSD becomes reality. Once Wall Street sees that FSD is becoming a profit generator the analysts start figuring the profits into their spreadsheets and TSLA moves higher. Many people here and on Wall Street are going to have to see Elon's Master Plan 4 to understand the giant that Tesla is poised to become. It's a choregraphed evolution that we very much need Elon in charge to pull off.

News:
* Drive Tesla says that a change in rules for British Columbia means that Model Y and Model 3 lose their subsidies. Model 3 RWD was less than $1000 above the cutoff max price.
* Sawyer Merritt says that Tesla has just lowered Model 3 LR and RWD prices by $1000 in Canada. In other words, Model 3 RWD suddenly became subsidy eligible in BC again. This is important because in the U.S. the IRA subsidy makes LR a much better deal that RWD and so Canada can take up some of the RWD slack. The biggest problem there is that there's snow in Canada, but RWD vehicles did well in Norway so RWD is not a show stopper.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts was 63% on Monday, indicating very serious manipulations

Yields on 10 yr treasury bonds closed near 4.23% on Tuesday

Max pain Tuesday morning was 180, which shows put-dominated now. That's a change since Monday. Strike 185 is a tall call wall which I think will be the battle for this coming week. TSLA's close on Tuesday puts the option sellers at 14 cents inside the safety zone.

Tuesday's TSLA options volumes

TSLA slid down to within the bollinger bands again and (more importantly to the option sellers) it fell below the 185 call wall.

Conditions:
* Dow up 57 (0.15%)
* NASDAQ up 5 (0.03%)
* SPY up 1 (0.25%)
* TSLA 184.86, down 2.58 (1.38%)
* TSLA volume 68.7M shares
* Oil 81.49
* IV 47.5, 55%
* Max Pain 180
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 63%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 5.8M shares

 

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TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

What can I say? It's a big triple-witching options expiration with max pain of 180, a put wall at 180, and a big call wall at 185. In that 180 to 185 sweet spot the market makers would make more near 180 than 185, thus the apparent substantial effort to push TSLA down again, with a close at 181.57. A declining QQQ that started strong in the green and ended weak in the red made the pushdown effort much easier.

Despite super-low volume of 55.6M shares traded and closing cross volume of more than 10% that volume (5.4M shares), the option sellers resorted to enough mischief to push percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts all the way up to 64%. Mercy! The market makers are really serious about tweaking Friday's closing price so that it closes a penny or so above 180.

News:
* TMC member @SO16 shared this Tweet about three states currently unable to deliver vehicles because of a cyberattack on a company that is used in the registration process. Lucky the wave has wound down quite a bit.
* In this Tweet, Roland Pircher details the immense Italy Tesla registrations that exceeded 400 in a single day.

I include a long-duration shorting chart because I need to emphasize how unusual this period we're in is. I've never seen anything like this that lasted so long. The above 60% plateau began on 4/29, so that's all of May of most of June so far. On Thursday, the percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts was a massive 64%, suggesting over-the-top manipulations.

Yields on 10 year treasury bonds closed near 4.26% on Thursday

Max pain Thursday morning was 180. You can see that strike is strongly put-dominated and so it makes sense that TSLA bounced quickly the one time it breached 180 during market hours. Strike 185, OTOH, is heavily call-dominated and needs to be protected. With max pain at 180, the most profitable close on Friday for the market makers is likely a penny above 180. For next week, max pain is 180 again.

Thursday's TSLA options volumes

The most noticeable feature of the tech chart on Thursday was the low volume: only 55.6M shares traded. More than 10% of that trading took place during the 4pm minute. In such an environment, the market makers move TSLA exactly where they want to.

Conditions:
* Dow up 300 (0.77%)
* NASDAQ down 141 (0.79%)
* SPY down 1 (0.27%)
* TSLA 181.57, down 3.20 (1.78%)
* TSLA volume 55.6M shares
* Oil 82.17
* IV 47.3, 53%
* Max Pain 180
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 64%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 5.4M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

The plot thickened as we reached Friday and despite the strongest of efforts, the option sellers could not push TSLA down to their desired target of 180.01. In fact, with a tall put wall at 180 and a tall call wall at 185 for this past Friday, TSLA's closing price of 183.01 was more than half way towards the high end. The market makers and their band of pirates did plenty of day-shorting of TSLA, with 63% of TSLA selling tagged to shorts on Friday, and their over-the-top manipulations required 10.4M shares of trading in the 4pm closing cross (that's about 16% of the day's total trading in the final minute!). Bullish.

Wall Street is saying that TSLA won't rise above 200 until the downward revisions of earnings is through. There's always a chance that could happen in Q2 since we had much inventory carried into Q2 from Q1 and that excessive inventory could help. I try not to bet on quarterly delivery and quarterly profits and instead HODL.

The reason I HODL is simple: TSLA looks like it has a real shot to become the world's most valuable company in time. It's not just the promise of FSD, robotaxi, and Optimus. These things are vital, but more importantly is that Tesla has the innovation speed that allows it to pull away from its competitors, no matter the business. It has the manufacturing chops that no other company that I am aware of can match. It has the star power for recruiting the top engineers and best minds in software development. Elon Musk really is the key and we need him to drive this next step into the AI world. He set us up hugely for success so far. Fortunately, shareholders ratified his pay package again and we're off to the races again. It's important to get Master Plan part 4 out, along with Elon's next compensation plan targets so that Elon is motivated to start achieving the goals. The kind of dominance we've seen with Tesla in the EV space will get to be unleashed in the FSD, robotaxi, and humanoid robot fields. It's going to be exciting, because Tesla does indeed have the secret sauce!

News:
* Auto dealers are still feeling the pain as Teslarati reports that hackers have halted the largest auto dealer software system and are demanding a high ransom.
* Roland Pircher is highlighting the massive Tesla sales in Italy as June nears its end.
* Alex Tweets that Former Delaware Chancellory Court Chancellor Chandler chastises (in shown clip) Chancellor McCormick and Vice Chancellor Laster for their inappropriate and unprofessional activism.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts was 63% on Friday, continuing the high manipulations that have marked the past two months.

Yields on 10 year treasury bonds closed near 4.26% on Friday

Where are the Friday Max pain and max pain volumes charts? I accidentally saved Thursday's, which you can access in the previous post. Alas, it doesn't make much difference, though, because we most certainly still had a tall put wall at 180 and tall call wall at 185. Max pain did drop from 180 to 177.50, which made TSLA's close above 183 all the more positive.

Max pain dipped and stock price rose on Friday, bringing about an unusual widening between the two for a Friday close. It looks like the option sellers lost control of the stock price, not so much because. there were so many buyers, but because there were so few sellers. A sign of things to come? Hoping so.

Max pain June 28. The put wall at 160 might be an artifact from hedge funds buying puts at that strike to force the market makers into selling some TSLA shares and lowering the price. OTOH, an equally tall call wall at 200 shows continued hopes for a rally. Notice that 180 is again put-dominated and 185 call-dominated.

Despite the ridiculously low volume on Friday, option sellers were unable to push TSLA really close to a more desirable 180.01 closing price. Looking at the tech chart, you can see that the insanely high level of day-shorting over the past two months has held TSLA within a narrow trading window, which has in turn caused the upper and lower bollinger bands to squeeze tightly.

For the week, TSLA closed at 183.01, up $5 from the previous Friday's 178.01. It's been a good week, my friends. Hoping you spent the weekend with those who most matter to you.

Conditions:
* Dow up 16 (0.04%)
* NASDAQ down 21 (0.18%)
* SPY down 1 (0.13%)
* TSLA 183.01, up 1.44 (0.79%)
* TSLA volume 61.7M shares
* Oil 80.73
* IV 47.7, 56%
* Max Pain 177.50 for Jun21, 180 for Jun28
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 63%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 10.4M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Here it is, short and sweet. The usual Monday open buying enthusiasm pushed TSLA above 188. That price did not sit well with the option sellers (because of all the 185 calls), and by 11am all the day's gains were gone. TSLA dared to exceed 185 a couple more times but the sledge-o-matic took care of those excursions. It took 60% of TSLA selling tagged to shorts in order to pull off this manipulation.

Overall, the Nasdaq was down 1.09% because Nvidia and other chip stocks were selling off. Dow was up because that's where some of the money went. The buying frenzy for TSLA at open likely included refugees from the chip stocks looking for a new growth stock that isn't overbought.

News:
* Sawyer Merritt reports on X.com that Tesla is now delivering different battery versions of Model Y and Model 3 to customers, depending upon whether they qualify for the IRA subsidy. If they do, they get Panasonic cells. Otherwise, they could receive LG cells. This should explain how Model 3 LR became eligible for subsidies again.
* Sawyer Merritt also reports that LR is on track to begin mass production of its 4680 batteries in August. LG also has another 4680 plant with a capacity of 36 GWh in Arizona, United States, which will be operational in 2026.

Yields on 10 year treasury bonds closed near 4.23% on Monday

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts was 60% on Monday, continuing the over-the-top manipulations to keep TSLA near max pain for Friday

Max pain remained 180 on Monday. Strike 180 was slightly put-dominated while 185 was call-dominated.

Max pain volume chart could not be downloaded.

Another day with big efforts to keep TSLA within a tiny trading range, and another day with resulting low volume

Conditions:
* Dow up 261 (0.67%)
* NASDAQ down 193 (1.09%)
* SPY down 2 (0.33%)
* TSLA 182.58, down 0.43 (0.23%)
* TSLA volume 61.1M shares
* Oil 60%
* IV 49.2, 67%
* Max Pain 180
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 60%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 4.3M shares

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

The day began with two positives. First, China insurance data showed Tesla with 17,500 deliveries the past week, likely juiced by the introduction of the Model 3 performance model. That was the highest weekly insurance number of the year. X.com's James Cat believes that Q2 deliveries may be close to 425K (above Troy's 410K). Roland Pircher shared his latest how goes it charts for China. Secondly, the Nasdaq was green and rising as Nvidia became a buy again and money flowed from the Dow back into Nasdaq Tech stocks.

So, we had good Tesla news from China and support of a rising Nasdaq. This combination (along with two months of buying pressure that required daily applications of the sledge-o-matic) overloaded the pirates trying to hold TSLA below 185 on Tuesday. The Mandatory Morning Dip was most anemic, which meant it would likely (and did) rally immediately afterwards. We saw two different attempts to put the genie back in the bottle: one around 10am and another starting around noon. The goal of both was to bring TSLA back to 185ish, where it could be controlled without doing damage to the week's earnings, but with the Nasdaq rising strongly after 2pm, even 63% of selling tagged to shorts wasn't enough to hold the buyers back.

Analysts are starting to become more bullish on TSLA:
* Perpetual underestimator Morningstar raised its fair value target of TSLA to $200
* RBC Capital retains an outperform rating for TSLA and a $227 target
* Stifel initiated coverage of TSLA with a $265 price target

Simply put, it's getting harder and harder for the market makers and hedge funds to pull the old, "nothing to see here, move along, move along" trick.

The rest of the week could go either way. Market makers are highly motivated to see TSLA get back below 185. OTOH, good China data takes away a little bit of the fear of Q2 Production and Deliveries report. Macros may be the deciding force this week. Many of us speculate that once TSLA gets past the Q2 reports the worst is over and anticipation of the August 8 event could drive the stock price higher. Don't miss the show.

Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts jumped to the elevated number of 63% on Tuesday, indicating LOTS of manipulating going on as the market makers failed to protect their 185-strike sold calls on Tuesday

Yields on 10 year treasury bonds leveled off around 4.23% again on Tuesday

Website maximum-pain.com has been glitched recently. Hopefully it comes back up soon because max pain is only half the story. The arrangement of puts and calls in open interest at various strikes gives us important insight into the motivations of the options sellers. The chart above is from optioncharts.io . Max pain was listed as 182.50.

The day's climb put TSLA just a few dimes away from the upper bollinger band. We need to disrupt the daily manipulations, allow TSLA to have a big up day, which will spread the bollinger bands a bit and allow less resistance. Notice that since early May the mid BB has climbed about $14. Progress is slow when you have Wall Street fat cats determined to make it slow. Once TSLA has a siginificant breakout, such as what could potentially happen after the Aug 8 robotaxi event, the situation can change dramatically.

Conditions:
* Dow down 300 (0.76%)
* NASDAQ up 221 (1.26%)
* SPY up 2 (0.39%)
* TSLA 187.35, up 4.77 (2.61%)
* TSLA volume 62.8M shares
* Oil 80.74
* IV 48.9, 66%
* Max Pain 182.50
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 63%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 6.9M shares