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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

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Regarding Wash Sales. I think I'm ok to sell one option at a loss, and a different one I already owned with a gain. It sounds like the point of the rule is to not sell at a loss, and THEN repurchase the same/similar within 30 days, to fake a loss.

This is what I read at Scwab:
Key Points
  • The wash-sale rule was designed to discourage people from selling securities at a loss simply to claim a tax benefit.

  • A wash sale occurs when you sell a security at a loss and then purchase that same security or “substantially identical” securities within 30 days (before or after the sale date).

  • If you end up being affected by the wash-sale rule, your loss will be disallowed and added to the cost basis of the securities you repurchased.
The wash-sale rule was designed to prevent investors from selling a security at a loss so they can claim tax benefits, only to turn around and immediately buy the same security again. Even investors who have no intention of breaking this rule can get tripped up by it if they use an automatic investment strategy, such as reinvesting dividends, potentially costing themselves some tax benefits in the process.

Does this sound right to anyone (that I'm safe selling my 2021 calls at a profit in the next 30 days after selling my 2020 at a loss today)?

In the end the numbers will be added up between your gains and your losses. It you sell at a profit you will just have less losses to write off.
 
Alright, so, call over.

I have questions: how exactly does a margin call work in this scenario (huge event triggering the margin requirement after-hours)?

Would the shorts typically get the margin call before open (tonight/tomorrow morning), upon/shortly after open, near close, or after close tomorrow?

And, don't they have a couple days to resolve the margin call after they get it?

Let me guess. You're asking for a "friend" who was too embarrassed to ask for himself? ;)
 
The shorts are saying that 75% of the profit is directly attributable to ZEV credits. So according to them Tesla is still not convincingly structurally profitable.

That's bull-sugar (cash from operations defines true viability, profitability and growth, and that was healthy in Q3 too with $756m), but they are certainly welcome to short into this rally! :D
 
Does this sound right to anyone (that I'm safe selling my 2021 calls at a profit in the next 30 days after selling my 2020 at a loss today)?

You can sell anything you already own for a profit without reseting or disturbing the wash sale rule. You just can't buy back during the 30 days. If you do, then your loss gets rolled into the basis of what you bought back within the 30 days and you can't claim the loss until you sell those shares/options.
 
Anyone remember a guy called Whitney Tilson? I made a bet with him some months ago on Tesla having a profitable quarter.

Fair play to the guy, he just emailed me that I won the best and he'll donate $100 to a charity of my choice.

You could reward his good sportsmanship by choosing a charity that he'd like as well :) Paying it forward.

That's a small gap up. I'm showing AH at $306. That's barely a 20% gap up which is not that much for a stock like TSLA. Don't get me wrong, 20% is 20% but in the bigger picture, it's peanuts.

Um... it'd be the second biggest single-day move ever for this stock in percentage terms. The biggest in absolute terms.

That said... I don't see this stopping after one day. You've got the delayed process of shorts covering, you have analyst upgrades, etc etc. Remember how Q3 '18 played out (man, I love Q3s.... ;) )
 
Let me guess. You're asking for a "friend" who was too embarrassed to ask for himself? ;)

I'm pretty sure @bhtooefr is inquiring about the potential timing of a margin call driven short squeeze that Ihor is hinting at.

I believe it's a longer process - the first forced buy-ins would happen tomorrow in after hours trading. But extremely margin squeezed accounts might be emergency liquidated intraday already.

Most institutional shorts won't be squeezed - at these price levels at least.
 
I'm pretty sure @bhtooefr is inquiring about the timing of a short margin call driven short squeeze.

I believe it's a longer process - the first forced buy-ins would happen tomorrow in after hours trading. But extremely margin squeezed accounts might be liquidated intraday already.

TDA has a 5 day rule, but not sure if that applies when very deep under water.
 
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Also, in 5 years Tesla will not be the major player in the EV market. They will be swamped with competition and had better figure out how to make them cheap enough to sell for well less than $35,000 and still make profit. That's what everyone else will be doing.

People have been saying basically this since 2012. As we see with *checks* every other major brand currently making EV’s, it turns out it’s not so easy to make that turn-around. No doubt others will be trying to ramp up cheap and good EV’s, but the old guard is going to have to find a way to very quickly and enormously up their game on cost, quality, range, power, and software if they want a hope for survival.
 
Just finished watching the CNBC bit with Gene. The reactions of their panel are hilarious. They were all practically saying the same thing "Oh wait for the call.....something could happen...you never know"

So easy to see that they were hoping for some bit of news like another Exec departing the company to try and paint something bad for Tesla.
 
Regarding Wash Sales. I think I'm ok to sell one option at a loss, and a different one I already owned with a gain. It sounds like the point of the rule is to not sell at a loss, and THEN repurchase the same/similar within 30 days, to fake a loss....

Does this sound right to anyone (that I'm safe selling my 2021 calls at a profit in the next 30 days after selling my 2020 at a loss today)?

It's not selling of anything that triggers wash sale. It's the buying of something (similar) within (+ -) 30 days of selling something at a loss. To wit, when did you buy that 2021 call?
 
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