This makes a lot of sense
unless...
What if the runup after the inclusion announcement (Nov 16) was due not only to front-running speculators, but also (or primarily) due to buying by benchmarked funds. Goldman Sachs claimed only 17% of their sample of benchmarked funds owned TSLA, but that was only a few days after the inclusion announcement, leaving a month for the funds to accumulate before Dec 18.
But if frontrunners were not the only or primary sellers during the Friday closing cross, who was?
The tweet linked by
@ggr seems a plausible answer: market makers short-selling to kill the mountain of $700 calls. Somebody certainly worked hard at 3pm Friday to drop the share price 6% in 45 minutes.
Either way, the result now may be almost the same. Somebody (benchmarked funds or market makers or both) may need to buy lots of shares tomorrow. But if it is mostly MMs needing to cover massive shorting, they will try hard to scare longs into thinking $695 was a bubble top, and will give us the mother of all mandatory morning dips. Don't be scared.