I assume joining S&P is still in the card. Tesla should satisfy the earnings requirement the earliest after Q1, latest after next Q3. TSLA will join S&P sooner or later, it's only a matter of time.
For normal companies, maybe it's easy to buy 20 million shares from the market. For TSLA, I don't think longs will sell their shares even if the price goes higher, especially when TSLA starts to have a string of positive quarters. So who will sell shares to the index funds?
My dad apparently... he sold 40% of his shares @ 299 right after earnings smh. I told him he'd be wise to not look at them again for 10 years.
Where are you getting this 20 million number btw? Is there any way to estimate how many shares would be bought by index funds after S&P inclusion? About 15% of float being bought by index funds while ~25% of float is shorted sounds like it could get interesting.