Papafox's Daily TSLA Trading Charts

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Ho hum, today was a classic day of manipulations to keep TSLA from doing a Mighty Monday rally, spurred on by enthusiastic macros. The NASDAQ rose 1.11% day, outperforming the Dow. Taking a look at TSLA you can see a big pre-market push down when QQQ showed a tiny dip. This should have been our clue that someone really didn't want TSLA climbing today. You can see a tiny dip of QQQ after market open, TSLA rising quickly when macros turned green, a heavy pushdown of TSLA when QQQ lost a small percentage around 11am, deep icicles as QQQ started climbing but someone was selling heavily to keep TSLA from rising with the macros, and finally a repeat of the long and deep push down of TSLA following a short and shallow QQQ push down into close as the manipulators pulled off a successful dip into close (despite no TSLA news and rapidly rising macros).

The one bit news was a Tweet from Elon Sunday night saying that the Annual Stockholders Meeting now has a tentative date of September 15 and would be held in Fremont to allow a tour of cell production facility. Bears would say the delay is bad news. Bulls would view this as substantially great news because the cell production line will be in operation at the time of the meeting.

Might negative interpretations of the Annual Meeting Tweet have caused TSLA's relative weakness on Monday? If so, you would expect selling to have pulled the price down, but volume was an especially low 6.4M shares, suggesting investors were simply holding their shares today while the manipulationfest was underway.

TSLA climbed in the latter part of after-hours trading, for a net loss of less than $2 for the day. The market basically shrugged off the market trading manipulations of Monday

Futures were down as much as 1% Monday evening before White House trade advisor Peter Navarro clarified some comments regarding China. After the clarification, at about 3:31am Eastern Time, we see the NASDAQ futures up 0.44%. With futures up and the NASDAQ hitting a new ATH, there's a chance macros could run higher on Tuesday and perhaps this time TSLA will shrug off the early morning manipulations and the bulldozer will start heading uphill. Sooner or later a catalyst will propel TSLA higher in a strong climb, if history repeats itself.

Shorts were tagged with 53% of TSLA selling on Monday

Some interesting ideas have come forward in the COVID19 situation in the U.S. Looking at the Daily New Cases chart for the U.S. above, you can see that the gentle downward slope has started trending upward lately as the economy reopens. This increase has caused a day or two of fear on Wall Street. How valid is that fear? Let's look below at the Daily Deaths stats.

You can see a profound decrease in daily deaths within the U.S., even though the New Cases have declined slowly and have recently increased. How to explain this rapid improvement in survivability vs. New Cases?
* Better treatments are probably NOT the reason. Remdesivir helps a bit and recently dexamethasone has shown to be helpful for patients with severe lung infections, but these drugs can not account for the significant decline in deaths.
* More testing might account for a lower percentage of deaths to new cases simply because many new cases went unreported recently
* In New York, a huge percentage of the deaths were in care homes, and since those awful days states have become more vigilant in protecting the elderly. Meanwhile, in many states the young people have become especially reckless in regard to the virus. The net effect may be a shift in percentage of vulnerable individuals with the virus versus individuals when are young, healthy, and can better weather the storm.
* An infectious disease specialist in Italy suggests the virus may have mutated so that it is less deadly. According to Professor Bassetti, "It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April but now it's like a wild cat. Even elderly patients, aged 80 or 90, are now sitting up in bed and they are breathing without help. The same patients would have died in two or three days before."

The important point for investors is that you should not panic as daily new cases rise. It's going to happen to some degree as the economy reopens. Rather, keep an eye on hospital beds filled and Daily Deaths.

What's happening in California is particularly pertinent to TSLA investors because of the Fremont factory. Notice the continual upwart trend in new cases for the state.

Daily Deaths in California plateaued during May and have dipped a little since then. The deaths lag new cases by 2 or 3 weeks, but as with the U.S. deaths, the California situation looks bearable at the moment.

By the way, I no longer monitor nor participate in the TMC coronavirus thread.

Conditions:
* Dow up 154 (0.59%)
* NASDAQ up 110 (1.11%)
* TSLA 994.32, down 6.58 (0.66%)
* TSLA volume 6.4M shares
* Oil 40.72 <<<<<<<<<<<< Note: over $40/barrel now (edited)
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 53%

 

[ggr]

* Oil 40.72 <<<<<<<<<<<< Note: over $40/gal now

ITYM barrel, not gal, above?

 

[LN1_Casey]

ITYM barrel, not gal, above?

I think if it's a $40/gallon, Tesla will half to auction off their inventory the demand would be so high!

 

[Papafox]

ITYM barrel, not gal, above?

Egads, I made two sloppy errors in Monday's post. Both are now corrected. Was very tired and didn't proofread like I normally do.

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Today TSLA once again departed from the macros by running up to a high before 11am and then slowly fading as the day went on. Meanwhile, QQQ started with a slight climb, maxed out shortly before 2pm, then gradually descended into close. I believe what we're seeing is the same manipulation game we've see for the past month or so as sellers of options are tweeking the stock climbs so that they can maximize profits. Unfortunately, it's sometimes hard to guess when the next big steamroller climb day will be, but the pattern is pretty established of a plateau that's finally broken by a massive climb.

Volume today was really low, a mere 6.2 million shares trading hands. Notice the big buys right before close, at close, and then prearranged trades in after-hours trading. I see about 200K shares traded in the first and last minutes of today's trading, 2 of the 10 final minutes of market trading each exceeding 70K shares traded, and about 64K shares in pre-arranged after-hours trades. As a general rule, the big end of day and after-hours pre-arranged trades suggest to me covering after manipulations during the day.

Truly, though, the real excitement with this stock right now is where TSLA is heading in Q2. Our retail delivery guestimators, Troy and Rob Maurer, are both guessing between 85K and 88K deliveries for the quarter, which is way above the 70ishK deliveries that the average analysts are expecting. I'm very intrigued by the possibility of a major surprise to the upside with both the delivery numbers and the 2Q ER. Recent news points to Elon pulling out all the stops to maximize income this quarter, and his push suggests to me that he's really trying to hit that $1 or more of GAAP profit this quarter. Here's news that supports that theory:
* Electrek says here that Elon sent a message to all employees asking them to go "all out" through the end of the quarter
* Tesla is offering one year of free supercharging to Model 3 buyers of inventory vehicles in Canada through the end of June
* Yesterday Elon tweeted the a migration will be allowed from enhanced autopilot to FSD for $3K, through the end of June
* Q2 saw new FSD features, which will allow Tesla to move some revenue already collected on FSD to the income statement in Q2

In other news:
* Wedbush estimates more than 650,000 cybertruck orders and calls pre-orders "staggering"

I'm loaded with shares and leaps in case Tesla pulls off a $1 profit this quarter.

Shorts were tagged with 56% of TSLA selling today

Looking at the tech chart, you can see the various plateaus of trading in this return to ATH and above. In late April, we saw the initial coronarecovery exceed 750 and then stabilize in the low 700s for a week. After a week of volatile trading, TSLA spent most of May plateaued near 800. There was a jump to the high 800s for a week and then a volatile climb to 1000, where we've been plateaued for about 2 weeks now. The upper bollinger band is now at 1067, so there's headroom for another big move pretty soon. Notice that the protective support of the 50 day moving average and the lower bollinger band are about to converge in the mid 800s.


Conditions:
* Dow up 131 (0.50%)
* NASDAQ up 75 (0.74%)
* TSLA 1001.78, up 7.46 (0.75%)
* TSLA volume 6.2M shares
* Oil 40.31
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 56%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Hi all. I have a icepack on top of my head as I bumped into that TSLA icicle that formed about 10am. Ouch, what a monster and really, really sharp! Someone really wanted to lower TSLA's price today. Such deep icicles form when there's negative news or a macro dip that gets accelerated by massive short-selling. This deep dip then takes out a bunch of stop-loss triggers and activates a bunch of bots to start selling. We'll call the 10am icicle a dip on steroids. Anyway, the manipulators pulled off a fast one today. You could see the probing to see how low TSLA could go. As it approached 960 buyers kept jumping in and so today was a constant push to get TSLA down to 960.

The NASDAQ was down a little over 2% today, while TSLA dipped a little over 4%. The 2X multiplier was excessive, even for a tech stock (and I checked many today), so I give manipulations that were accentuated by FUD as the primary force.

You see that massive increase in per minute trading right around the icicle time (orange volume spikes right above the time)? That's how an icicle is made, and at its peak trades per minute exceed 80K. It could be that with macro weakness, some big dog players are pushing for a dip so that they can get into the stock at the best possible price before the Q2 P&D Report comes out.

You'll also notice that when TSLA is soaring, no media outlets want to look ridiculous with their FUD, so they tend to save it for times when TSLA's stock price is falling. Such was the case today. FUD included:
* Business Insider grabbed onto the perpetually low Morgan Stanley price target today and suggested that TSLA could fall 35%. In reality, nothing has changed in quite some time.
* The NHTSA is investigating 11 claims over 13 months that early Model S touchscreens have failed. The NHTSA has to prove a safety issue, and the supposed issue is that the backup camera could fail ("Backup camera just went out, we're all going to die!" is utterly ridiculous).
* CNBC gave air time to Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins who bashed Tesla because the JD Powers rating for initial quality suggested more squeaks, rattles, and paint issues than other manufacturers, except Higgins hid the problems and didn't reveal until specifically asked. He also referred to the NHSTA issue about older Model S touch screens.

On top of the FUD, macros were down today because several states continue to see spikes in Coronavirus new cases. Here's the worldometer chart for California today, which is the most applicable to Tesla. It's high but not terrible. Let's keep an eye on it.

The big non-Tesla negative news that sunk the markets was that Florida was now reporting over 5K new COVID 19 cases every day. Some states are going to have to make adjustments to keep the virus from running too high.

On the positive side, later this week we could see a potentially stunning report on hydroxychloroquine when given early and with azithromycin and especially zinc included. Normally you could see a positive reaction to such news, but HCQ has become so politicized because of Trump, that many media outlets may choose to ignore the report or place a negative spin on it. This will be interesting to see.

We also saw a heads up in Clean Technica about a positive article from WSJ reporter Dan Neil about Model Y. It's as if the bread and butter reporters at WSJ know they need to bash Tesla and its products but you have a few rebels such as Neil who have that rare quality seldom seen today: journalistic integrity.

Finally, in the good news department, we see this article in Electrek about Tesla's Project Roadrunner. The new battery cells and production methodology will be mind-blowing when revealed.

How does one navigate the negative coronavirus news and the increased FUD? Sitting it out should work well because in little more than a week, as early as July 2, we could see Q2 production and deliveries numbers, which should surprise to the high side. I think most analysts aren't giving enough consideration to Model Y deliveries. We're seeing 19XXX vins being assigned at the moment, which suggests a blistering ramp up speed. If you have dry powder, watch carefully but don't be too quick on the trigger. It's possible the macro dip plus additional FUD could persist through the week (but certainly not guaranteed to do so).

TSLA shorts were tagged with 58% of selling today

Looking at the tech chart you can see that we had a pretty big dip below the current plateau today. If you take a look at other plateaus, you can see that other big dip occurs but they were quickly reversed and the plateau returned. That's not to say we won't see another dip tomorrow if macros are down, but the tendency has been to return to the plateau after a dip.

Notice where the low was today... right above the mid bollinger band. If you look at TSLA price since early April, it has pretty much stayed within the upper and mid bollinger bands (with short excursions above the upper). I think part of the reason for this behavior is that the option sellers want to keep TSLA's price as controlled as possible to maximize their profits. TSLA tends to be more under control close to the mid-bb because then the bollinger bands are not moving as much as they do when price is pegged to the upper bb.

Conditions:
* Dow down 710 (2.72%)
* NASDAQ down 222 (2.19%)
* TSLA 960.85, down 40.93 (4.09%)
* TSLA volume 10.9M shares
* Oil 38.07
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 58%

 

[alexGS]

Egads, I made two sloppy errors in Monday's post. Both are now corrected. Was very tired and didn't proofread like I normally do.

I think I spotted the other, the word ‘increase’ instead of ‘decrease’. It matters not, a tiny blemish in a consistently excellent presentation. I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for all the work you put in, and your insights, particularly into market conditions (Coronavirus, analysts, etc.) really useful for those of us overseas who may not otherwise see all the news. I always find your posts interesting and an essential part of my daily reading. Greetings from New Zealand

-Alex

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Shortly after market open the macros did a quick swan dive, with TSLA more than eager to join in. As 10am approached, QQQ was down about 1% and TSLA bottomed out down about 2%. The combination of some short-selling to add steroids to the dip plus the natural inclination of trading-inclined investors to pull some money off the table with macro weakness led to the quick fall at TSLA about 10am. It's a shame, but the heavy shorting on dips of days past has conditioned TSLA traders to sell quickly when they smell weakness.

Alas, the Feds decided to save the day and as the dip progressed, the Feds announced changes to banking rules that loosened things up for banks to make more money and the macro dip turned right around, which led to the macros trading slightly up and slightly down for most of the remainder of the day. If not for that intervention, I suspect the macros would have had another rocky day and TSLA would have closed below the mid bollinger band.

Over at TSLA, many of those traders who jumped out of the stock throughout Wednesday and also this morning suddenly wanted back in, which propelled TSLA up to about 975, where the usual suspects likely capped it. About 3pm, when the macros started rising in earnest, TSLA joined in and we saw a close at nearly 986, a nearly 50 point increase from the morning's low. Helping TSLA out today was the trajectory from red to a climb throughout the day.

In after-hours trading, we see a noticeable stock price increase nearing 8pm. That rise was likely in response to this Electrek.co article, which suggests that Tesla may greatly exceed delivery expectations in Q2 and deliver up to 95K vehicles. Now, you and I have been talking about the 85K-88K delivery estimates from Troy and Rob Maurer compared to a leaner 70Kish expectation from analysts for some time now, but Electrek chose to shake things up with an uber-high delivery estimate, and it's this high estimate that lit the stock on fire as 8pm approached. My guess is Tesla will fall short of that 95K deliveries, and the Electrek article will give some reason to say Tesla fell short of recent expectations. For this reason I dislike such high numbers being published. Nonetheless, Something around 85-90K deliveries would likely astound Wall Street in this weak quarter and lead to some nice price appreciation. It's strange, but our network of retail investors has been doing a better job of predicting where TSLA is going than the pros. Keep this fact in mind. Sometimes we are quite ahead of the market and you often need to be patient to allow the market to catch up with what we've known for some time.

Yahoo shows after-hours rise to exceed 991. With such an upward trajectory going into close and then accelerating into after-hours, I suspect we'll see a strong showing of TSLA in pre-market trading on Friday, as well.

In theory, TSLA could have a particularly strong Friday, as it bulldozes its way upwards. OTOH, it is a Friday, so let's take a look at the options that will expire. Note that if TSLA rises too quickly on Friday in pre-market and at open, this sets the manipulators up for a profitable downward push into close, particularly if there's significant macro weakness. TSLA climbing as the day goes on, such as today, is good. Descending from an early high to a closing low is bad.

As you can see, calls sold at a strike price of 1000 are by far the most plentiful with over 8K to expire on Friday. Notice all the small stairsteps of call options between 950 and 1000. This movement away from big round numbers and instead to lesser-used strike numbers is a response to the typical hedge fund/market-makers tendency to manipulate so that the most plentiful strikes end up just barely at or out of the money.
So, with TSLA rising 50 points from the day's low, it's entirely possible we see a fight at 1000 on Friday. If TSLA bulldozes through 1000, then next big strike price to defend would be 1030.

TSLA shorts were tagged with 58% of the selling today

Looking at the tech chart, you can see the blue 50 day moving average and the lower bollinger band converging just below 850. The combination of these indicators provides nice support, if ever needed. Today TSLA dipped below the mid-bollinger band for a short period, but once the market turned around, buyers were quick to snap up any shares below the lower bb, and TSLA recovered most of the losses from Wednesday.With the upper bb at about 1058, there's good headroom for a strong day at some point.

Conditions:
* Dow up 300 (1.18%)
* NASDAQ up 108 (1.09%)
* TSLA 985.98, up 25.13 (2.62%)
* TSLA volume 9.3M shares
* Oil 38.86
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 58%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Thursday evening, we saw mixed signals as to what TSLA would do on Friday. Thursday had been a climb into close and then a secondary climb in after-hours as some retail buyers started acquiring after Electrek's article about a "source" saying Tesla might deliver close to 95,000 vehicles in Q2. On the negative side, this was a Friday and manipulations and FUD this week had been particularly noticeable.

As it turned out, macros decreased all day, with the NASDAQ closing down 2.59% and Dow down 2.84% over additional coronavirus worries. In particular, Florida showed a big jump upwards. The media ignored Electrek's article, deeming it too high a number to believe. Instead, it focused on a Deutsche Bank upgrade of TSLA from $850 to $900 that sent the stock up 0.8% in pre-market trading. That pre-market bump couldn't compete with the sinking macros, and so TSLA lost ground on Friday.

Comparing TSLA's chart to QQQ's, you can see some of the mischief conducted near close on Friday. From 3pm until 3:20pm, TSLA gained about $7 as traders started buying the stock in preparations for Monday. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ was still heading down at this time. For about 12 minutes from 3:25pm until about 3:37pm, TSLA took a deep dip, losing about $12 as the hedge funds and market makers punched back. From about 3:40pm to about 3:48pm, QQQ rose noticeably but TSLA was mostly capped during this rise. The net result is that the trader buying was canceled out by the manipulations and TSLA closed slightly lower than the NASDAQ on a percentage basis for the day. Such a manipulation required some covering in the final minute and after hours. We saw 966K shares trade in the final minute of market trading, which is more than 10% of the day's trading in one minute. Mercy! A prearranged trade for nearly 300K shares followed in after-hours trading, as well.

Should we be worried about the spikes in COVID19 cases in certain states? It depends upon whether any action is taken to dampen those spikes. Fortunately in Texas the governor just closed bars, reduced indoor dining to 50% of available capacity, and even pulled the plug on river-rafting. If other governors take similar moves, the spikes should respond. We know much more about this virus now and I don't expect to see the same carnage we saw earlier in New York and New Jersey.

On the positive side:
* @Artful Dodger posted on TMC data that supports a view that since funds tend to buy stocks that did well that quarter in order to dress up their sheets, and since they tend to do so on the final day of the quarter, June 30 might be a positive day for TSLA.
* @FrankSG also posted on TMC his best estimates of how production capability at Tesla is set to rise dramatically over the next few years with as much as 2 million vehicles production by end of 2022.
* With the media ignoring Electrek's article about massive deliveries in Q2, the market is still set up for a big surprise if Tesla can deliver between the 85K and 88K vehicle numbers predicted by Troy and Rob Maurer, respectively.

There are good reasons for holding onto this stock ; ) I bought another leap on Friday afternoon.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see about $90 of headroom between the current stock price and the upper bollinger band. Notice too that TSLA bounced off the mid-bollinger band on Friday, helping this trend of upper-bb to mid-bb trading to solidify. Finally, the lower bb has caught up to the 50 day moving average, with both about 851 now, setting up some nice support if we ever need it.

For the week, TSLA closed at 959.74, down 41.16 from last Friday's 1000.90. It was the first negative week of trading in 6 weeks and required macros to be off 2.5%-3% to bring about. After $200 of gains, a $41 retreat due to macros is not too bad. Have a great weekend.

Conditions:
* Dow down 730 (2.84%)
* NASDAQ down 260 (2.59%)
* TSLA 959.74, down 26.24 (2.66%)
* TSLA volume 8.9M shares
* Oil 38.49
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 57%

 

[Davidzhao365]

Thanks! Which leap did you buy if you don’t mind?

 

[Papafox]

Thanks! Which leap did you buy if you don’t mind?

I must confess that I'm not particularly knowledgeable at analyzing call options. There are others in these threads who are much better at that task. When the stock is way down in a deep dip, I tend to buy somewhat in the money leaps. When we were in the 300s, I bought a ton of 200-strike Jan21s. Later I started buying 400-strike Jan22s. I'm typically looking for a strike price where you see a significant decrease in time value. I'd normally be looking at 400-strike calls with an expiration sometime in 2022 when TSLA is trading in the 900s. On Friday I actually bought a Mar22 1000 call. I bought the 1000-strike for complicated personal reasons that I won't go into here. Paying this much time value is not normally my thing, but I'm particularly bullish regarding Q2 results, and so I went for it. If there's more of a dip before the stock price starts recovering, I may pick up another 400 strike leap (Mar22, probably). I chose expiration date of Mar2022 because it gave me nearly as much time as the Jun2022 but at a price that seemed more attractive. Once I see present catalysts realized, I'm likely to move my leap money in my IRA (where most my wealth resides) into common TSLA stock. There's no tax consequences for changing holdings within the IRA, so my techniques are going to be different than someone trading in a normal brokerage account. Finding the discipline to deleverage back into stock after a big run higher is the goal. If we go up, I'm loaded to the earlobes with stock. If we go down, I wait for the bottom then leverage back up into leaps and profit from the volatility.

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

Anyone for a 1009 Mighty Monday? TSLA showed significantly more strength relative to QQQ in pre-market trading as some investors likely digested the Credit Suisse note about Tesla poised to deliver 90 to 100K vehicles in Q2. Most of the mainstream media didn't make a fuss about the note, but it obviously added some kick to TSLA's trading on Monday. Contributing to the strong Monday was strength in macros (with Dow up 2.3%) and an artificially low price for TSLA on Friday close, owing to a week of FUD and manipulations.

Once the morning dip of the macros completed, it was off to the races as another positive pattern, TSLA coming strongly out of the red and climbing, took place. TSLA worked its way up to the 990s, where it spent most of the day. This was a classic steamroller day as TSLA volume was light (9 million shares) but the gain was significant, causing market makers to buy throughout the afternoon to delta-hedge.

At 3:28pm, Electrek.co released this leak of a message from Elon to employees, urging them to go all out because reaching break even in Q2 was going to be extremely tight. If you look at the TSLA chart, you will see it run uphill at an extreme angle immediately after 3:28pm. For Elon to put out this message, I'd give chances of a profit at better than 50/50 now. Better yet, Tesla will be so close to profit one way or the other so that if it misses slightly in Q2, Q3 will be a shoe-in. My leaps will be happy one way or the other.

As @Curt Renz pointed out, the NASDAQ took off in a strong climb with 8 minutes of market trading left, which really added rocket fuel to TSLA's climb today and led us to a close at 1009. Curt also reminded us a few days ago that the final day of a quarter (Tuesday, June 30) is the day that some funds do window dressing and pick up shares in winning stocks. Let's see if it happens.

In other positive news, TMC member @Mike Smith posted this link and summary that when Tesla's Martin Viecha, Head of IR, was talking with Bernstein's Toni Sacconaghi he mentioned that in the near to mid-term, Tesla's savings on manufacturing costs would likely dwarf improvements in battery price.

TMC member @pz1975 did some calculations on Tesla's 10th year anniversary and deduced that since it's climb from an IPO price of $17, TSLA has appreciated 5,837%. Not bad.

This chart gives a good idea of how TSLA fared vs. other stocks over the past 10 years

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that today's run higher brought TSLA right back up to the high plateau where it's been trading lately. I suspect we'll no longer be on that plateau after Thursday's Production and Delivery report, if it is given before market open. Friday is the observed holiday for Independence Day, so we'll be having a short trading week. TSLA could climb 46 this week without bumping its head on the upper bb. If the P&D report numbers are exceptional, the upper bb will not be a solid resistance point and it would slice through it.

Sorry for the late report. My desktop computer's motherboard decided to retire today, and the troubleshooting, ordering new parts, and moving my laptop into the prime role was quite time consuming. Nonetheless, congratulations all on a great trading day and the promise of a rewarding year ahead.

Conditions:
* Dow up 580 (2.32%)
* NASDAQ up 117 (1.20%)
* TSLA 1009.35, (6.17%)
* TSLA volume 9.0M shares
* Oil 39.32
* Percent of selling tagged to TSLA shorts: 56%

 

[stephenburns1]

Great! Thanks for sharing

 

[smorgasbord]

View attachment 558493
TMC member @pz1975 did some calculations on Tesla's 10th year anniversary and deduced that since it's climb from an IPO price of $17, TSLA has appreciated 5,837%. Not bad.

Another calculation is that from $17 to $1039 in 10 years, TSLA produced a 50.89% CAGR. What other investment returned over 50% per year for 10 years?

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

A new All Time High on a Terrific Tuesday, anyone? Wow, all the planets aligned today.
* First, we had the leaked Elon email about breakeven. This leak came out about 3:30pm on Monday and didn't have time to fully take hold. After-hours trading can be constrainted by you know who very easily. Today the news was out and people were buying TSLA on the hopes that S&P500 inclusion was coming. One way or another they're right (with an extra quarter of wiggle room, if need be).
* Take a look at the QQQ chart above. Not only were macros up, but they started about neutral and climbed throughout the day. That's the perfect catalyst for TSLA climbing
* Remember @Curt Renz 's comment about window dressing on the final day of the quarter. Guess what today was?
* We had sufficient volume that the manipulators couldn't stop this steamroller once it got moving forward. The total gain was high enough to keep market makers doing some delta-hedge buying into the afternoon, so a manufactured push down would be really hard to pull off.
* The upper bollinger band was high enough to accommodate most of today's climb and anytime TSLA rose much above 1080 it tended to settle. Big institutional buyers like to pick up stock below the upper bb.
* Looking at the Ihor Dusaniwsky chart below, some of the most stubborn shorts are at last throwing in the towel. Their covering helped today's run higher. Some of the buying may have been in response to margin calls.
* We may be seeing ETFs that mirror the S&P500 starting their accumulating now. The writing is certainly on the wall.

Where do we go from here? The option sellers would want us lower by Thursday's close. If no word is out on Thursday about Q2 production and delivery numbers, they may succeed to some extent, but I believe TSLA is likely to hang onto much of today's gains. OTOH, if the numbers come out Thursday before market open, then the stock price is heading wherever those numbers lead the market. Bollinger bands likely won't constrain the P&D report move because there's so much emphasis here and implications for the future.

Meanwhile, Troy revised his delivery estimate upwards. After listening to the news this weekend, I'm revising my guess upwards, too, and think that with Rob Maurer at 88K and Troy at 89,600, that's a reasonable guess for now. Deliveries over 90K look possible.

News:
* Today Tesla exceeded the market cap of Exxon, which suggests the massive shift in energy coming out way. Coca-cola also fell. What is Tesla's market cap? Take a look:

At long last the holdouts who have been shorting TSLA are starting to give in.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that we're still seeing TSLA working the pattern of the past few months, bouncing off the mid-bollinger band of the last few days and then poking above but still being constrained by the upper bollinger band. The significance of today's trading (besides another ATH) is that TSLA has departed the 1000ish plateau and has moved higher, likely to a new one. How much higher? The P&D numbers will tell us.

Congratulations to all!

Conditions:
* Dow up 217 (0.85%)
* NASDAQ up 185 (1.87%)
* TSLA 1079.81, up 70.46 (6.98%)
* TSLA volume 16.9M shares
* Oil 39.83
* Percent of selling tagged to TSLA shorts: 55%

 

[m_lab1]

Papafox, you mention the manipulators couldn't move the stock down much today but, looking at detailed charts, in the afternoon, you can notice strong downward pulls, every time QQQ moved down. Also, from around 3:25, the QQQ finished the day very strongly, while TSLA never stopped moving down, losing 7 points. Just curious if you think that's what it was. Thanks for the great work!

 

[Papafox]

Papafox, you mention the manipulators couldn't move the stock down much today but, looking at detailed charts, in the afternoon, you can notice strong downward pulls, every time QQQ moved down. Also, from around 3:25, the QQQ finished the day very strongly, while TSLA never stopped moving down, losing 7 points. Just curious if you think that's what it was. Thanks for the great work!

Good point. Looking at the TSLA chart, the real battle today looked to be at 1080. TSLA didn't spend much time above it before sinking, and on a few occasions, it bounced approaching 1080. Part of the explanation would be the upper bollinger band at about 1071 and losing some institutional buyers above that point.

Let's look at the case for manipulations, though. There's evidence of capping at 1080 because of the stock's behavior today. Shorts were tagged with 55% of selling, a fairly high number, and 957K shares traded hands in the final minute of market trading. That's nearly a million shares on a day when about 17 million shares was the volume, so it's a fairly big chunk of the day's trading and could represent a good amount of covering short positions from daily manipulations.

Let's look at motive. Although Tesla will likely announce production and delivery numbers before Thursday's market open, it may not, and in that case the sellers of options will likely want to keep TSLA below 1100, which is a round number and a popular strike price for Friday's expiring call options. Holding the line at 1080 would keep TSLA manageable below 1100. Once the price crosses 1100, bulls have a tendency to get excited and that's the last thing the option sellers want.

Like you said, TSLA did not participate in the final minutes rally of the NASDAQ today, yet another suggestion that capping was underway.

So, looking at both our points, I agree with you that we were likely seeing manipulations today. That conclusion is something I reach rather often, as you know, and rather than sounding like a broken record, I focused on other forces affecting the stock price today. Nonetheless, I agree with you regarding manipulations today. I suspect TSLA would have closed above 1080 if not for them.

 

[Papafox]

TSLA chart above

QQQ chart above

A nearly 40 point climb and new ATH anyone? I must admit to being surprised by the strength of TSLA this morning as it zoomed above 1130 before 11am. Alas, that early climb was a setup for a profitable step-down of the stock price by manipulators and they were making good headway until about 2pm. Take a look at the QQQ chart above. Notice that it continued to climb as the day went on. What happened to the manipulators is that the rising NASDAQ gorked their pushdown and thus we saw TSLA rally until about 2:30pm when QQQ took a short dip. When QQQ resumed climbing, though, the manipulators were pretty successful in capping the TSLA climb.

Why was today's TSLA behavior more susceptible to a pushdown than yesterday's?
* Volume was heavier yesterday, 16.9M vs. 13.3M
* Gains were higher yesterday than today: 70 vs 40
* Yesterday, TSLA climbed slower to its high, which gave manipulators no great opportunity for engineering a pushdown that lasted most of the day
* Today TSLA began its climb above the upper bollinger band and went up from there, thus isolating itself from some institutional buyers
* Thursday is the end of the trading week. Manipulators were just that much more frantic Wednesday compared to Tuesday.

Did you notice how straight as a ruler line the after-hours trading was until 6pm? I suspect that manipulators were capping after-hours trading to keep it under 1120 (they succeeded by 31cents in market hours and by 20 cents until 6pm, just as they succeeded in keeping TSLA below 1080 yesterday by 19 cents). TSLA climbing today by 39.99 at 6pm instead of 40.00 or above was not coincidence either, methinks. Anyway, word came out after 6pm that Elon sent a congratulatory message to Tesla's workers. Here's the CNBC article covering the message, written by none other than Lora Kolodny. Take a look at its effect upon the After hours price of TSLA:

The message said, "Just amazing how well you executed, especially in such difficult times. I am so proud to work with you!”. Now add this message to the one which said that Tesla is extremely close to break even. It doesn't take much imagination to deduce that Tesla delivered enough vehicles in Q2 to break even. Thus, the buying after 6pm. I strongly suspect that we'll see upward pressure on the stock price in the morning because of that message, if the P&D report has not yet been released. Kolodny suggested in her article that the numbers would come after the close of market trading on Thursday. Who knows.

Also interesting in the CNBC article was Kolodny pointing out that FactSet delivery numbers as of July 1 for TSLA averaged 72K. Contrast that estimate with the one Bloomberg cobbled today today which is much higher. Notice how the low price target analysts guessed quite high? I suspect those analysts are gaming the system and trying to set TSLA up for a miss. I don't think it'll happen, but that's the game. Dana Hull would love to get a "miss" article launched immediately after the numbers come out. BTW, I added the price targets to the left of the Bloomberg graphic.

News:
* In this video, a TMC member on June 30 had autopilot save his vehicle and possibly his life when a semi-truck entered his lane. We're seeing more and more of these videos in the last two months. The safety benefits of autopilot are going to be incredible.

Looking at the tech chart, the upper bollinger band has risen to about 1094, making most of today's trading above the upper bb. Notice how the slope of the upper bb is bending to a steeper angle. If the P&D report numbers are good (and they should be), then the upper bb is ready to move quickly upwards to trail closely the run higher that TSLA may have in store. Notice, too, the very definite breakout from the 1000 plateau that the past three days of trading have set in motion.

With this evening's message from Elon to employees (he gave it earlier in the day but word came out after 6pm), I suspect Thursday will have a positive morning. If manipulators start beating the stock down in the afternoon, you'll have opportunist traders buying before market close, which should counter some of that downward push. If the numbers come out before market open, and they're good, it's off to the races and the upper bollinger band will not be a constraint for something this important.


Conditions:
* Dow down 77 (0.30%)
* NASDAQ up 96 (0.95%)
* TSLA 1119.63, up 39.82 (3.69%)
* TSLA volume 13.3M shares
* Oil 39.64
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 55%

 

[Papafox]

I forgot to include some latest delivery estimates:

Rob Maurer is now estimating 95,900 deliveries in Q2

Our own @FrankSG is estimating 101,000 deliveries in Q2
TSLA Q2'20 Deliveries and Earnings Forecast: 101k Deliveries & $260M GAAP Profit

 

[Christine69420]

View attachment 559378
Looking at the tech chart, the upper bollinger band has risen to about 1094, making most of today's trading above the upper bb. Notice how the slope of the upper bb is bending to a steeper angle.

Using StockCharts I see $1094 for the upper bollinger band too. Then if I switch the period to weekly the upper bollinger band is $1119.87 which is pretty close to where we ended up yesterday at $1119.63. Is this a coincidence or do institutional buyers prefer the longer view?