elon clearly is taking issue with the mechanics of short selling and the resourcefulness with which they operate.
einhorn, after horrible recent results, seizing the opportunity to issue a statement comparing tesla to lehman and calling tesla deceptive, cnbc all too willing to swallow it whole, without even a quick safety-whiff
...talk about the pot and the kettle
that is exactly why elon is doing this. not because he’s rattled, because he’s pointing out the biased, unbalanced, inefficient, and corrupt system for his 22.7mm followers and their followers to see and connect the dots themselves.
even people here talk as if a certain event will cause the stock to move one way or the other. it rarely works that way. tsla even less so.
the drop in stock price happens regardless what elon says or does at this time, because it has to!
inv banks/hf’s/hft’s won’t make money unless it goes the opposite way everyone expects it to go based upon the ramp successes and failures.
they jerk it around to shake all the money away from each other and us, and then let it rip upwards once they delever... and then restart the whole cycle again!
it’s like an inverse bubble, except it deflates on the “rise” and inflates and pops on the deleveraging
I agree with the sense of what you're getting at - particularly the idea that the banks etc.. make money when the stock moves differently from generally expected and "..they jerk it around to shake all the money away..".
This idea is part of why I am such a big believer in buying and holding REALLY long term. My idea of a short term trade is buying 2020 or 2021 LEAPs (I've got a few 2020 LEAPs). Mostly, I own shares outright (no margin), with a current mental model that I'm owning the shares for 10+ years. Most of the shares (2/3rds?) come from our initial purchase in 2012, when we bought with a 10+ year outlook.
5 years later, and the investment thesis has been updated over the years so that today it's still a 10+ year horizon, with my next significant reevaluation coming (I now believe) sometime next year (or 2020 at worst) -- when Model 3 is high volume and well established in most of Tesla's markets around the world.
At that reevaluation, I'll be assessing whether there is still a 10+ year backlog of new markets and new products. What I see right now, the 10+ year investment horizon will still be true in 2020 or 2021 (too many more big products that need to come to market, and then come up to scale, for my investment thesis to change yet). And my next big reassessment will be coming when Semi (mostly) and Roadster are up to scale (but probably not a big reassessment for Model Y).
Anyway, back to my point - if you're buying and holding shares for a really long time, then you don't lose money when the shares go down as they have recently, anymore than you make money when the stock reaches an ATH. Of course the ATH is more fun than what's happening now. With the right investment horizon, you can be equally indifferent today to a 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, or 4xx stock price, because all of them are just noise compared to what seems reasonable (at least to me) in 10 years.
Of course, it'd be nice if the potential could be realize next year instead of in 9 years
. But that's why I (mostly) stay away from leverage in any form - the market, even when it's not being actively manipulated (as I believe it to be), can be irrational for far longer than I can remain solvent.
