Papafox's Daily TSLA Trading Charts

[Papafox]

Today was a classic TSLA trading day with a little of everything. Pre-market trading was positive, averaging about 780. We failed to see the usual pushdown into opening, and as a consequence we saw a FOMO run-up right after open to a price a bit higher than 788. Alas, such prices are too close to 800 for the comfort of those individuals who sold 800 calls that expire on Friday, and so we saw the typical pushdown after the enthusiastic run-up. By 9:57 that pushdown reached the red at about 773. Such pushdowns are profitable for the shorting party, provided there's time to cover later that day. A dip of the NASDAQ a little after 10am assisted the pushdown.

Trading was relatively light around the 780 level for most of the remainder of the day, but as 2pm approached we saw a pushdown into the red that accelerated after hours to as low as 743. Most of us traders were scrambling to find the reason for the pushdown, as a recall of 15,000 old Model Xs to replace some power steering attach bolts resulted in enough of a market cap dip so that it exceed $100k per vehicle involved. This is absolutely nuts as the supplier of the parts will likely pay for the recall which will involve a short visit by Tesla mobile service. Nonetheless, it looks like this was the rationale for the dip. No doubt shortie added gasoline to the fire by doing some selling and enhancing the dip. My feeling is that TSLA closed at 748.xx last Friday and shortie might want to see TSLA close below that number this Friday in order for Wall Street to see that TSLA closed down for a week after about 9 consecutive up weeks.

Another incentive for shortie to exaggerate this dip is that after every big runup, there are new shareholders who have not been initiated into the gauntlet of short-seller-induced pain yet. This could be an attempt to shake out some of the weaker new TSLA shareholders, especially those who set stop-loss triggers too close to the trading price. It takes a special individual to tolerate the slings and arrows that shortie sends at TSLA longs, and so it's a reminder that you truly did EARN that nice increase in stock price we've seen during the past two months.

I cannot say with 100% certainty that the recall of 15,000 Model Xs to replace some bolts was the entire reason for this dip. It's just too big a dip for such a small issue. Nonetheless, I felt this was likely the explanation (since no other explanation for the dip has come forward), and I purchased close to 100 shares at 755 to play the dip. We may see a sub-748 at some time before close on Friday and I will have bought too soon, but I think there's also a good chance that the lunacy of a dip like this over that tiny recall will be unwound quickly, and so I decided to play the dip with a planned rebuy Monday morning. Fingers crossed.

Macros were way up today with the NASDAQ closing up 0.90.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that with today's dip, the consolidation is starting to look more horizontal than shallow climb. This is still an okay event as the consolidation reinforce's TSLA's new value neighborhood. Once the upper bollinger band climbs above 900, that price becomes a whole lot more achievable because institutional investor resistance decreases. Note, too, that volume was again low, about 11.5M shares. Fewer and fewer longs are willing to sell at these prices, and that's a good thing.

Conditions:
* Dow up 275 (0.94%)
* NASDAQ up 87 (0.90%)
* TSLA 767.29, down 7.09 (0.92%)
* TSLA volume 11.5M shares
* Oil 51.71
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 44.5%

 

[smorgasbord]

View attachment 510600
I cannot say with 100% certainty that the recall of 15,000 Model Xs to replace some bolts was the entire reason for this dip. It's just too big a dip for such a small issue. Nonetheless, I felt this was likely the explanation (since no other explanation for the dip has come forward)

There was also the NTSB release of documentation on two AP related deaths: NTSB releases details in two crashes involving Tesla Autopilot (but maybe that came out after the close?).

 

[Papafox]

Yesterday's TSLA drop in afternoon and especially after-hours trading was likely due more to an upcoming Tesla capital raise than to an inexpensive Model X recall for replacing a few bolts. Apparently some traders (likely shorts) found out early about the cap raise and figured the stock price would be going down. They bet wrong as the price rose above 800 today.

The big question is whether TSLA's climb to above 800 today was the work of impressed investors or perhaps a positive manipulation by Goldman and Morgan Stanley in order to make the job of selling the cap raise easier and enabling an extra 15% to be sold as well. My guess is that both the initial dip of the stock price and the rally of the stock price today were attempts by two different sides to suggest a direction of stock movement for today's news and investors got swept along, first with Fear of Falling (FOF) and with Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). Once the offering is completed we'll get a chance to see what the investors by themselves think of it.

Considering that the equity offering is based on yesterday's closing price of 767.29, the ability to raise over $2 billion with just 1.5% dilution should be considered a positive for the company in the long run. In the short run, be careful. The raise may hint at the simultaneous construction of the Model Y factory at GF3, the Berlin GF, and a new Texas GF. If such is the case, analysts are going to have to revise their revenue models significantly upward. Also, the cap raise today paves the way for a Moody's upgrade after a reasonably positive Q1 or Q2 ER, and that upgrade will indeed move the stock price.

Meanwhile, the 10K came out and @Fact Checking in this post noticed that regarding deferred revenues, "as of December 31, 2019, we expect to recognize $751 million of revenue in the next 12 months." I'll take that as a nice positive.

Volume was massive at 26.3 million shares.

I thank @Earlian for reminding us that this Daily TSLA Trading Charts post from May 2, 2019, showed a similar pattern of red trading in pre-market but giving way to green trading that looked manipulated to get a specific result in the stock price. A few days after the offering, the macros had a big dip and TSLA dipped with them, suggesting no manipulations any longer. The post and the next few days is worth reviewing to look for similarities in trading between the two cap raises.

I chose to close out my one day short-term trade today ; )

The NASDAQ closed slightly lower today, down 0.14 and had little influence on today's TSLA trading

Looking at the tech chart, you can see the narrowing stock price after the big moves last week, suggesting that manipulations by Goldman and Morgan Stanley may have been underway for a few days so far. In particular, the two may have walked the TSLA SP down from above 800 on Monday and may have walked it up from pre-market dips today to reach a price which makes the 767.29 equity offer look attractive.

All in all, today was a very nice day for TSLA and its long-term prospects. Please don't get carried away with big short-term bets, however, because there are lots of moving parts today and it'll take a few days for the full story to sort itself out.

Conditions:
* Dow down 128 (0.43%)
* NASDAQ down 14 (0.14%)
* TSLA 804.00, up 36.71 (4.78%)
* TSLA volume 26.3M shares
* Oil 51.46
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 38.7%

 

[CyberOwl]

Thank you for your informative posts. Wondering where you closed your position today?

 

[Papafox]

Thank you for your informative posts. Wondering where you closed your position today?

Definitely far from perfect. I was time constrained and could have done much better if I had time to devote to TSLA today.

 

[ggr]

I don't think the $767.29 is the actual offiering price; I think it will be the closing price today ($804). Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.

 

[re04586]

I don't think the $767.29 is the actual offiering price; I think it will be the closing price today ($804). Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.

That’s how I understood it as well - $804 off today’s closing price.

 

[Bighorn]

Tesla prices its secondary offering at $767 a share to raise $2 billion

 

[ggr]

I don't think the $767.29 is the actual offiering price; I think it will be the closing price today ($804). Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.

I was wrong, and ...
MOD: Here endeth this discussion. --ggr

 

[Papafox]

To understand my thinking you need to release any preconceptions that Wall Street is an honest casino. Now that you've checked your naivety at the door, welcome to Papafox's explanation for Friday's trading.

In pre-market trading, TSLA dove sharply until shortly before market open. It bottomed out at 9:10am with a price of 775. Retail investors getting the Fear of Falling jitters? While that's possible, consider that Friday is options close day and the vast majority of Fridays have closed red during this massive rally. Consider too that on many days in recent weeks, we've seen unexplained progressive stock slides into market open, and I think a new manipulation technique by the hedge funds is a more likely explanation than a new form of panic by retail investors. Thus, I'm leaning toward a negative manipulation with an aim of keeping the SP below 800 at close today. The ultimate triumph of the shorts would be to disrupt the stock price enough so that the 767-priced TSLA stock offering comes up short on shares sold because the SP fell too much.

A few minutes before market open TSLA started climbing steeply and broke into the green just 5 minutes after open. Move over hedge funds, the big dog investment houses, Goldman and Morgan Stanley have just entered the room. They have big bucks to make by selling these $767-priced shares for Tesla no later than Wednesday of next week, and they're not going to let any punk hedge funds screw with their plan to trade TSLA at or above $800 today. The boys selling the shares expect such support from the trading jocks in GS and MS. It's how this business works.

Up until about 2pm, the game was to keep TSLA around 804 and avoid a red finish. Check out the chart and see for yourself. It was kind of a reverse whack-a-mole with the big dogs buying any time the SP dipped too far. Sometimes FOMO got the better of investors and they bid TSLA up as high as 814 today, but those who understand how things work on Wall Street realized this stock was on rails for the day. On occasion, hedge funds would dick around with the stock price by selling on elevated volumes, but the price always returned to 800 or above. Always. Don't mess with the big dogs.

Overall, I believe there was overall pressure to pull TSLA below the 804 price today and after 2pm the big dogs allowed their target to slide to 800. With 18 minutes remaining before market close, the hedge funds made their move and spearheaded a 52K sale in a minute's time. Other selling barrages followed in quick succession, and TSLA dipped as low as 793 before the big dogs grabbed the stock price by the scruff of its neck and dragged it three pennies above 800 for the close. Check out how level the SP was after close. Like I said, don't mess with the big dogs.

Seeing that TSLA spent more time below the target price than above it, I'd say the GS and MS used a fair amount of ammo to keep TSLA above 804 and later 800 today. That realization would have negative implications for where the stock price is heading after the big dogs finish their sale, but you need to keep in mind that this was Friday and there's always downward pressure on Fridays.

Monday is a holiday, so what can we expect on Tuesday after a return from the three day weekend? One possibility is that there's a bit of a Monday Morning Buyers Exuberance on Tuesday morning and the big dogs sit back on the haunches and let the buyers do their thing while they sell a little here and there to get rid of some of those Friday shares purchased. If macros are bad or FUD is generated, it'll take some buying just like Friday to keep the SP above 800, but I suspect they'll do it again. I think on Tuesday and Wednesday we can get an idea whether the stock was being propped up like it was on Friday. If so, you could expect a dip after the big dogs go home. OTOH, with a few days of trading mostly above 800, there's a chance that TSLA rises above its 800 pin and the big dogs can take a nap. After all, TSLA took off this past Monday morning before the big dogs pulled it down a bit and longs could do the same Tuesday morning. I suspect they'd allow the stock price to run higher this time because now the stock offer price has been set and any rise in the stock price just makes the sales job that much easier.

I suggest some caution, though, because although the type of buyers of a stock offering such as this aren't usually the type to turn right around and sell after a buy, there's about a $33 arbitrage play that can be made by buying at 767 and selling a few days later at 800.

Speaking of hedge funds, the biggest and most successful hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater, bought nearly 45,000 shares of TSLA in Q4. Anyone wondering why they're number one? This is Ray Dalio's company.

Macros were split today with the Dow slightly down and the NASDAQ closing up 0.20%

Here's a development you might like: upper bollinger band is now 59 cents below 900. I imagine that much institutional investor buying is being concentrated on the stock offering right now, rather than trading on the open market, since shares are available for a discount at the moment.

For the week, TSLA closed at 800.03 up 51.96 from last Friday's 748.07. Add in the 411.18 climb from the previous 9 weeks and you have a 10 week climb of 463.14. That's a somewhat decent climb in my opinion. Have a great weekend.

Conditions:
* Dow down 25 (0.09%)
* NASDAQ up 19 (0.20%)
* TSLA 800.03, down 3.97 (0.49%)
* TSLA volume 15.7M shares
* Oil 52.05
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 45.5%

 

[Papafox]

Monday morning buyers exuberance on a Tuesday anyone? The three day weekend managed to work its FOMO magic on a number of buyers. Initially, the macros looked like they were both going to be down about 1/2 a %, due to Apple announcing that their quarterly results would be impacted by coronavirus in China. Alas, positive developments with Tesla managed to turn the day into a big positive, however. Morgan-Stanley Analyst Adam Jonas issued a major upgrade to his TSLA price targets. Rather than 10-bear, 250-base, and 500-bull of a somewhat recent series of price targets, the revised price target became 250-bear, 500-base, and 1200 bull. The market remembered how short a period of time it took TSLA to reach Jonas's bull case after it was issued, and buying took off. Meanwhile, Bernstein's perpetually bearish analyst Toni Sacconaghi nearly doubled his price target to $730. With even bear analysts giving targets in the 700s now, the Fear of Falling gets substantially diminished. Moreover, Sacconaghi sees no "imminent" negative catalyst for the stock.

OK, I need a show of hands. How many of you think that it's just coincidence that Morgan-Stanley's analyst gave a big upgrade to TSLA as the company is wrapping up its TSLA share offering and possibly is in a position to score a large number of those $767 TSLA new issue shares with an additional 10% issued when the stock price is pushing $850? Hmm, North America and Europe, I don't see any hands. Ah, I guess it's not coincidence, is it? I'm a little disappointed that I didn't see this move coming because it's entirely in character with how Wall Street works.

Looking at the daily chart, it looks like word of the MS upgrade really set the stock off in pre-market trading. Once the SP ran above 840, all Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had to do was fend off the inevitable hedge fund attacks on the stock price and buyer enthusiasm would keep TSLA from sagging. It worked, and TSLA even climbed into the close and through after-hours trading. Since percent of TSLA selling by shorts number rose to 58% today, I suggest that the hedge funds were trying to derail the rally with a dip. Just as with Friday, though, the stock price coasted along relatively level. Just coincidence, I'm sure, right?

Both the NASDAQ and Dow opened low, but the NASDAQ managed to close up 0.02%.

The percentage of selling by shorts jumped up to 58% today, suggesting the hedge funds and other shorts were unhappy with the very stable price of TSLA today after the initial run up and were trying to do something about it. Rule number one on Wall Street: Don't mess with the big dogs.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see the upper bollinger band is at 915 now, so a run to 900 now looks possible without a repeat of the whiplash trading that took us to 960ish and then back down again.

Looking at this weekly chart, the very definite pin for the cap raise seen in the daily chart disappears, as does the typical Friday manipulations. Instead, you see a relentless drive upwards with the stock price. It's too early to count this rally over yet.

With so many nice gains in our accounts now, let me just repeat a strategy I believe in. Find your comfort zone for a long run that will include most of 2020 and possibly longer. If you've adjusted your TSLA holdings for a long hold, you should be okay with allowing it to run and not suddenly fear either FOMO or FOF (fear of falling) and making an emotional reaction that interferes with your investment strategy. It's too easy to miss a run higher, such as today's. Granted, some of us make short-term bets with trading shares, and that's fine, but be comfortable with your level of exposure with your core investments and allow them to grow. My investment thesis is that S&P500 inclusion is coming this summer (possibly sooner) and the stock price should be higher than it is now once the big houses acquire their TSLA stock. Between now and then of course there's going to be volatility.

In the short run, my guess is that GS and MS will provide additional support to TSLA on Wednesday. Bets are off for when they have completed the stock offering and you know who comes back into the picture.

Conditions:
* Dow down 166 (0.56%)
* NASDAQ up 2 (0.02%)
* TSLA 858.40, up 58.37 (7.30%)
* TSLA volume 16.1M shares
* Oil 51.98
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 58%

 

[JimboAZ]

View attachment 512644
Monday morning buyers exuberance on a Tuesday anyone? The three day weekend managed to work its FOMO magic on a number of buyers. Initially, the macros looked like they were both going to be down about 1/2 a %, due to Apple announcing that their quarterly results would be impacted by coronavirus in China. Alas, positive developments with Tesla managed to turn the day into a big positive, however. Morgan-Stanley Analyst Adam Jonas issued a major upgrade to his TSLA price targets. Rather than 10-bear, 250-base, and 500-bull of a somewhat recent series of price targets, the revised price target became 250-bear, 500-base, and 1200 bull. The market remembered how short a period of time it took TSLA to reach Jonas's bull case after it was issued, and buying took off. Meanwhile, Bernstein's perpetually bearish analyst Toni Sacconaghi nearly doubled his price target to $730. With even bear analysts giving targets in the 700s now, the Fear of Falling gets substantially diminished. Moreover, Sacconaghi sees no "imminent" negative catalyst for the stock.

OK, I need a show of hands. How many of you think that it's just coincidence that Morgan-Stanley's analyst gave a big upgrade to TSLA as the company is wrapping up its TSLA share offering and possibly is in a position to score a large number of those $767 TSLA new issue shares with an additional 10% issued when the stock price is pushing $850? Hmm, North America and Europe, I don't see any hands. Ah, I guess it's not coincidence, is it? I'm a little disappointed that I didn't see this move coming because it's entirely in character with how Wall Street works.

Looking at the daily chart, it looks like word of the MS upgrade really set the stock off in pre-market trading. Once the SP ran above 840, all Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had to do was fend off the inevitable hedge fund attacks on the stock price and buyer enthusiasm would keep TSLA from sagging. It worked, and TSLA even climbed into the close and through after-hours trading. Since percent of TSLA selling by shorts number rose to 58% today, I suggest that the hedge funds were trying to derail the rally with a dip. Just as with Friday, though, the stock price coasted along relatively level. Just coincidence, I'm sure, right?

View attachment 512645
Both the NASDAQ and Dow opened low, but the NASDAQ managed to close up 0.02%.


View attachment 512646
The percentage of selling by shorts jumped up to 58% today, suggesting the hedge funds and other shorts were unhappy with the very stable price of TSLA today after the initial run up and were trying to do something about it. Rule number one on Wall Street: Don't mess with the big dogs.


View attachment 512647

Looking at the tech chart, you can see the upper bollinger band is at 915 now, so a run to 900 now looks possible without a repeat of the whiplash trading that took us to 960ish and then back down again.


View attachment 512648
Looking at this weekly chart, the very definite pin for the cap raise seen in the daily chart disappears, as does the typical Friday manipulations. Instead, you see a relentless drive upwards with the stock price. It's too early to count this rally over yet.

With so many nice gains in our accounts now, let me just repeat a strategy I believe in. Find your comfort zone for a long run that will include most of 2020 and possibly longer. If you've adjusted your TSLA holdings for a long hold, you should be okay with allowing it to run and not suddenly fear either FOMO or FOF (fear of falling) and making an emotional reaction that interferes with your investment strategy. It's too easy to miss a run higher, such as today's. Granted, some of us make short-term bets with trading shares, and that's fine, but be comfortable with your level of exposure with your core investments and allow them to grow. My investment thesis is that S&P500 inclusion is coming this summer (possibly sooner) and the stock price should be higher than it is now once the big houses acquire their TSLA stock. Between now and then of course there's going to be volatility.

In the short run, my guess is that GS and MS will provide additional support to TSLA on Wednesday. Bets are off for when they have completed the stock offering and you know who comes back into the picture.

Conditions:
* Dow down 166 (0.56%)
* NASDAQ up 2 (0.02%)
* TSLA 858.40, up 58.37 (7.30%)
* TSLA volume 16.1M shares
* Oil 51.98
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 58%

Papafox, I think you've mastered the art, no... science, no..., corruption of Wall Street. Greed, power, fear are just a few of the reasons why things move the way they do.

I'm in my mid-60's now but I went back to school for a so-called "Executive MBA" around my late 30"s. I was in a reasonable experienced cohort of students. Somewhere along the way, a professor repeated the old adage "The Street prices a stock at the optimum value all the time, because it's a consensus of millions of minds at work". BS (literally) I called. Instantly it was seconded and thirded by other experienced students. The professor admitted that when he taught regular MBA classes fresh out of college they "ate it up", but agreed with us that it made no sense. Such is our education on how things really work. Keep up the good work. Nice to see TSLA finally getting some credit for what they are doing. ~ Jim

 

[NZ10K]

Regarding the theory of the big dogs will keep supporting the share price on Wednesday... Are they not finishing the sell of the shares for this round of raising still? My uneducated guess is that they sold the shares on the day they closed the deal, ie last Thursday. It's only 2m shares after all. Curious to know how this process works.

 

[Papafox]

Regarding the theory of the big dogs will keep supporting the share price on Wednesday... Are they not finishing the sell of the shares for this round of raising still? My uneducated guess is that they sold the shares on the day they closed the deal, ie last Thursday. It's only 2m shares after all. Curious to know how this process works.

Good point NZ10K, you and I both want to know more. The entire quantity of stock could have sold out quickly. Wednesday was stated as the end of the offering period, however, so maybe there's some reason for avoiding any disruptions to the stock price through that date. The reason I suggested some positive manipulations for tomorrow is that we've seen positive manipulations today with a real absence with dips of any size. I'm suggesting that today's trading obviously reflected buying pressure, but the top of the trading today was just too smooth and lacked the usual valleys and peaks. Part of the answer is scale, of course. Once the SP has climbed $40, the rest of the trading looks tamer. Nonetheless, with shorts tagged with 58% of TSLA selling, I think they were trying to induce a few dips, but nothing of noticeable size pops out.

How do we tell if GS and MS are involved with smoothing the stock tomorrow? I suspect the trading might look more lumpy if they quit. That should be a clue.

 

[Papafox]

In case you missed it...
TSLA has been climbing rapidly in after-hours trading, as reported in the main investment thread. One theory is that the market-makers haven't been able to keep up with their delta-hedging of options after the recent rise, and so they've been buying in after-hours. Here's a post by @generalenthu that speaks of the matter.

 

[jerry33]

Regarding the theory of the big dogs will keep supporting the share price on Wednesday... Are they not finishing the sell of the shares for this round of raising still? My uneducated guess is that they sold the shares on the day they closed the deal, ie last Thursday. It's only 2m shares after all. Curious to know how this process works.

I believe they sold them all the first day, but the issue is that if the price goes down, they will look as if they performed a pump and dump which will hurt them badly the next time the brokerage houses want to sell an issue of new stock from other companies.

 

[Papafox]

Take a look at how relatively smooth the trading was Friday and Tuesday. Now look at today's trading, which is much more typical. We see the big volume spurts with a push down attempt and then recovery... like we see on a typical day. I rather think that Goldman and Morgan Stanley are hands off today and the buying by market makers to get their delta-hedging back to neutral has been a dominant up force. Good news also is an up force, bringing some new investors in.

 

[Papafox]

ATH close above 900 anyone? Although some of you may be disappointed with the fade from morning highs, I'm stoked at today's performance. As my post this morning suggested, I believe the trading with valleys and peaks shows that Goldman and Morgan Stanley went hands off on TSLA today, but the stock nonetheless did a pretty good job of avoiding the big push down efforts from you know who.

The really interesting part of the trading already happened by market open. In yesterday's after-hours trading, TSLA gained 10s of dollars as speculation suggested that the day's volume wasn't high enough for market makers to delta-hedge their substantial number of sold options, given the price rise. That delta-hedging apparently caused today's pre-market trading to hover around 920. Right after opening we saw two brief mandatory morning dips, one at 9:31am and another that bottomed out at 9:45am. From there it was off to peak at 11:19am of over 944. Twice in the afternoon we saw substantial dips that weren't part of the NASDAQ trading. Check out the volume indications and both the peak and the deep valleys involved substantial increases in trading volume.

Naturally, the clueless media attributed today's rise to a price target upgrade.

Consider too that volume was a very substantial 25.4 million shares. This volume suggests that the market-makers were able to keep up with delta-hedging today (especially with a bit of afternoon fade), which would explain why we didn't see the strong uptrend in after-hours prices that we saw Tuesday evening. Another consideration of the big volume is that today was the day that those traders who regretted not getting out on the day with the brief rise to 960 would likely sell. Jim Cramer said sell some of your TSLA and keep the rest, so there was definitely lots of selling but of course there was just as much enthusiasm for buying and TSLA closed above 900. Those dips today were deep and suggest a really concerted effort on the part of the hedge funds to press TSLA down. Percent of selling by TSLA shorts was up to 60.5% today, which also suggests the short-sellers were making a real effort to start a panic dip to match the deep closing dip of Feb 4. Unfortunately for them, they lacked the volume of selling that the Feb 4 manipulators (MMs or GS+MS?) could put forth, and buyers bid the stock price up into close.

Other good news is that today's rally never had to bust through the upper bollinger band. Consequently, today's rise looks far more sustainable than the Feb 4 rise.

The good news keeps on coming:
* Tesla did indeed succeed in raising $2.3B in cash from this capital raise
* Over 500K Cybertruck reservations are now in, according to this Forbes article.
* Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter boosted his TSLA price target to $928
* An Electrek article shows a large building near the Reno Gigafactory that may be the future production site for Tesla semi

The NASDAQ closed up 0.87% today

Good things come for those who wait. The Feb 4 excursion above 900 shows all the signs of over-exuberance that could fall prey (and did) to a large negative manipulation. In contrast, today's rise remained below the upper bollinger band and showed considerably less volatility. The upper bb stood at 943 today.

Shorty (likely the hedge funds) certainly is trying like the mischief to trip up this week's rally.Percent of selling tagged to TSLA shorts was up to 60.5% today.

What to expect for Thursday and Friday? We see huge (like 15K) concentrations of call options at 900 and again at 1000 that will expire on Friday. The hedge funds may be frantic to push TSLA below 900 for the Friday close. Expect a mandatory morning dip on Thursday that would be designed to suggest another Feb 5 dip is coming (it's not). If TSLA shakes off the manipulations and climbs, expect an all hands on deck effort to keep TSLA below 1000 for Friday's close. If you are trading options, consider going for strikes that won't be such clear targets as 900 and 1000.

Conditions:
* Dow up 116 (0.40%)
* NASDAQ up 84 (0.87%)
* TSLA 917.42, up 59.02 (6.88%)
* TSLA volume 25.4M shares
* Oil 53.82
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 60.5%

 

[Papafox]

We did see our initial mandatory morning dip right after open. It was a small one and TSLA recovered quickly to above 900. Alas, after 11am the macros swan-dived with the NASDAQ down about 1.4% at one point and TSLA fell below 870 as the hedge funds have been waiting for an opportunity to add steroids to a dip and create a much bigger dip, something closer to 5 or 6%. Check out the volumes around the time of that dip. What you have is a macro event that causes selling, shorts exaggerate the dip with selling, algos detect all that selling and start selling too, weak longs do some panic selling, and stop-loss triggers are activated. Hoping some of you picked up shares near the bottom, it was a total over-reaction. Most of the dip was erased by close. Notice, though the level trading just above 890 from about 1:30pm until about 2:30pm even though the NASDAQ was climbing during this time. This was most likely a capping effort because it's far easier to keep a stock from rising when its been down than it is to push it down later. At the end of the day, TSLA closed down about 2%.

In News:
* Carsonight suggests that the warehouse at GF1 that Electrek thought might produce the semi-truck is not actually a Tesla building
* Reuters reports here that the lawsuit preventing the tree cutting at GF4 has been dismissed. Ladies and gentlemen, start your chain saws!

The NASDAQ closed down 0.67% today but had a big fall shortly after 11am over statements by a Fed VP.

Last week we watched as the upper bollinger band climbed above 900 and gave the "all clear" signal for big investors to buy in at that amount. Now we're seeing the upper bb rise to nearly 963 today, which is giving this stock further headroom.

I've circled the Feb4-5 dip (the one on the left) which I was expecting the hedge funds to try imitating today to scare some of the newer TSLA shareholders into selling, and I think that big NASDAQ dip after 11am was their best chance to explore just how well TSLA could still be manipulated. You can see the clear icicle patterns in the trading, suggesting quick selling bursts designed to maximize the dip. Unfortunately for the shorts, investor sentiment is quite a bit more stable this week compared to the Feb 4 excursion above 900. Not only was today's dip minuscule compared to the previous dip, but take a look at volumes. On Feb4 and 5, TSLA was running up over 100 points a day and volume was record high. Today's trading was just a fraction of that volume as most longs simply held their shares and are riding out this bump.

I think the hedge funds are going to give significant effort on Friday to hold TSLA below 900. They may or they may not succeed. If there's a nonsense dip on Friday I'll probably pick up a few trading shares or call option for sale on Monday. The weekly patterns remain in effect with first half of week bullish and second half tending towards bearish. GS & MS were babysitting TSLA last Friday, so don't assume this Friday will be as stable. Ah, but come Monday ...

Conditions:
* Dow down 128 (0.44%)
* NASDAQ down 66 (0.67%)
* TSLA 899.41, down 18.01 (1.96%)
* TSLA volume 17.8M shares
* Oil 53.55
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 58.5%

 

[Evoforce]

Rumor of a couple of good things to shoot stock prices up. Tesla can continue clearing for German factory and China factory getting stride.