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

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Hey! Here's some icing on today's cake. Latest short figures have just been released, and short interest INCREASED by 1.1 million shares since the last reporting period. 37.18 million shares were shorted as of 10/15 settlement.

Tesla, Inc. Common Stock (TSLA) Short Interest

The stock has been pretty stable and thinly traded since 10/15 (until today of course)...so assuming no net covering, those 1.1 million shorts were already underwater by about $50 million this morning.

Interesting. Looks like Ihor was off ~2M shares, or ~1.4%. If he was wrong about the covering through that time period was he wrong for the next week or so, or did the covering end up happening to catch it up to his most recent report...

@ihors3 said:
Ihor Dusaniwsky‏ @ihors3 Oct 15




$TSLA short int is $8.99bn; 34.98mm shs shorted; 24.80% of float, 0.56% fee. Now the 2nd largest U.S. short behind $AAPL. Shs shorted down -3.9mm shs, -10.04%, over last 30 days as price rose +5% & down -750k shs, -2.1%, over last week. Shorts down -$568mm in MTM October losses.

@ihors3 said:
Ihor Dusaniwsky‏ @ihors3 6h6 hours ago




$TSLA short int is $8.31 bn; 32.62 mm shs shorted; 23.13% of float; 0.58% borrow fee. Shorts are down $1.4 billion in mark-to-marker losses this morning as #Tesla beatearnings & sales expectations. Read my research note at: https://shortsight.com/s3-analytics-tesla-shorts-down-1-4-billion-on-q3-results/ …
 
Didn't the democratic governmentg gave Tesla a life line during the recession?

No. Tesla got a loan from the DOE in 2010 of around 500 millions which was used to start the model S program, at that time Tesla was already safe after the recession. That program was actually approved under Bush and was meant to spur alternative energy developments. Ford got much more money than Tesla under that program. Also Fisker got more money than Tesla, if I remember correctly.

What saved Tesla during the recession was the fact that most of the existing investors doubled down at the end of 2008 (Musk famously put in everything he had left of his fortune) and a Daimler investment in may 2009 for Tesla to make the power train for the Smart.
 
Interesting. Looks like Ihor was off ~2M shares, or ~1.4%. If he was wrong about the covering through that time period was he wrong for the next week or so, or did the covering end up happening to catch it up to his most recent report...

Yeah, Ihor was off not just off by 2.2 million shares, but note the trend of steady short covering he reported after October 15:

Tesla10.24.1.png


If that's wrong too then his TSLA short interest numbers as of yesterday might be off by ~3 million shares, which is a substantial error.

In principle it might also be possible that short interest increased further before Q3.

Potentially a lot of shorts got trapped, with near record short interest.
 
TSLAQ are more like flat earthers - never had a legitimate piece of evidence to stand on in the first place, and whenever you state obvious facts to disprove one of their stupid theories they just shout “fraud” and/or invent a new even more absurd theory.

I vote to designate shorters and tslaQ believers as flat earthers from now on. Such a fitting name.
 
The TSLA trading today was pretty much as many here might have expected. After the big opening jump following the earnings report, it followed the macro market down for an hour, with expanded effect apparently due to profit taking by weak longs. Of course short sellers may have been among the usual suspects. Then buying interest led to a rise for the remainder of the session. Much of that could have been some institutions resuming belief in the prospects for Tesla. The hop during the final half-hour may have involved short sellers covering in advance of margin calls. Then a bit of weakness during after-hours appears in sympathy with the Nasdaq being dragged down in response to the earnings report from Amazon.com.
 
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These people are so deluded, so out-of-touch with reality, they actually think they are battling evil. It's sad but hilarious at the same time.

The sad thing about this particular story is that the only thing he has left to offer his "fellow" shorts is a beach volleyball lesson! Probably lost the $50,000 inheritance from grandma and grandpa and is *still* living in mom's basement.

Wow. I don't bother with Twitter, and have largely ignored the online #TSLAQ crowd, but for whatever reason today, I indulged and clicked that link.

What a fascinating adventure in bizzaro world that was. It's real people using real words, talking (quite a bit) about something that makes absolutely no sense. I tried to put myself into the shoes of someone who could resist facts and reality to gain an appreciation for the other side? but I gave up after the third Twitter account.
 
Interesting. Looks like Ihor was off ~2M shares, or ~1.4%. If he was wrong about the covering through that time period was he wrong for the next week or so, or did the covering end up happening to catch it up to his most recent report...
He's always wrong. Dude's methodology is flagrantly bad and he should not be taken seriously
 
After looking at the Q3 update I realized they improved margins on service to from -22.8% to -21.7%, but still lost ~$119 million in that area, I'm trying to figure out why Tesla is losing so much in service, and what is stopping them from reversing that.

I thought in most dealerships service is a major profit driver. What is Tesla doing differently that is costing it so much money?

Tesla's don't need the same amount of servicing ICE cars need. My P3D is over a year old and has never needed service. My wife's LR RWD is 1 1/2 years old and has never needed any service. All of our new ICE cars needed multiple service visits in those timeframes. Also, from what I've read on these forums, there is a lot of servicing performed for free or at very low prices to create goodwill.

Is it simply the pricing of the parts? Tesla has the parts priced so low that they are losing money when you add everything else in?

Can they price the parts higher without some backlash if that is the issue? I assume there's some reason Tesla has elected not to increase parts pricing.

Musk owned exotic cars before he founded Tesla and if you have ever seen the parts cost on those you will know why he felt robbed every time he needed a part. My theory is, because of that, he vowed that parts should only have a relatively small flat-rate mark-up to cover distribution and inventory costs. I'm always surprised how reasonable things like Tesla wheels and tires are (for their quality).

Tesla wants loyal customers, not to rob them blind. Then they would be just like other auto stealerships.
 
He's always wrong. Dude's methodology is flagrantly bad and he should not be taken seriously
I get it for anyone who feels he should be ignored, but from what I recall the only time he was significantly wrong was earlier this year (and boy, was he wrong). This feels like it is shaping up to be the same thing. But I don't feel like I should write it off until it is proven wrong -- so I'm going to continue watching and check it again when the next official numbers come out. If it happens again I probably will start ignoring him as well.

edit: meaning -- was the error earlier this year just a one-off weakness in his method? Or is there a fundamental problem rendering it useless (at least for $TSLA).