Clearly it's a bullish article worthy of sending the stock to new ATHs

Just to follow up, it sounds like on CNBC he's still short and nothing has changed on his case. Was some speculation due to his new shorts that he had reduced or exited and given Morish's theory about large funds shorting TSLA getting destroyed vs their long market hedges it would've made some sense given the recent price action. Maybe Einhorn or someone else has been covering, who knows?

Definitely short covering here. I remember the loser short Mark Spiegel tapped out at $360 or so a good while ago right before it dropped back down. Then got back in lower and is feeling the pain again. The graph of short interest vs price is pretty hilarious, just bad gameplay all around, almost an inversion. "Stock price bro" is a real thing.

Three big Musk pumps today (semi, 3000/week "going to Europe in February", etc) + a friendly analyst are what sent it up despite that embarrassing article. He knows how to work the stock and his mouthpiece press against bad news.

Chanos Tesla short is small only 5% ($100 mill) of one of his funds if i remember correctly which is probably why he is so successful.

skabooshka tweeting for the fourth day:



Thread there has more details:
WTF is going on? There is absolutlely no reason to not be pumping out cars before the $7.5K government subsidy ends if the US demand is there.

In the middle of 4+ day massive slowdown at the strangest possible time.

1) Supplier issue? Rumor from a factory tour group is large numbers of workers just standing around. Employee parking lot could also be a mis-match for current low production #s.

2) Can't sell/store any more production. Even the most generous (to Tesla) TMC SS reporting rates have total numbers just way way down.

My theory all along is that they will run out of demand and Elon will go further insane under the pressure until something gives out. Kind of makes me not want to cover/re-open my long-term options right now even though the tax writeoff would be valuable.

Yeah, the most robust thesis was always high end demand running out in early 2019 and them being ****ed as debt comes due and they need > $10 billion in capex. Even if they can raise to limp along/pump Model Y, demand cratering/not being able to profitably make cars below $40K will crater the stock.

Not reading anything into this at this point except to point out how weird it is.

Maybe it's both. Suppliers going COD so they can't make anymore + lack of demand. There are plenty of photos out there of abandoned parking lots filled with M3 inventory that Tesla is desperately trying to hide.

In which case, given everything they have done already I don't see why they don't just go full on fraud and just pass off the rotting inventory as the 35k M3, unless it is absolutely necessary to keep the inventory there to satisfy their ABL.

Interesting idea that if they have a surplus of aging M3 stock they 'start' production of standard battery early and software limit the old cars with some flimsy excuse: 'Customers need to experience the Tesla at an easy entry price, this will offer even more value as they can chose at any later date to extend the range for an extra fee'

The demand secret is going to get out soon enough anyway. Maybe they could combine this move with some aggressive accounting to avoid margin/abl hits.

What's up everyone. Seemingly, the stock is now near all time highs, but TSLA is still doomed according to the bears.

The best bear idea was that Elon Musk is ALWAYS lying and ALWAYS wrong about timelines, just this ONE EXCEPTION where he talks about being single digits away from bankruptcy is true. Are people saying out loud what they are writing here? TSLA was never really single digits away from bankruptcy.

TS,
it also doesn't mean that Elon tried to raise capital just because he was single digits away from bankruptcy.

Good to see though that not a single bear has retracted his thesis and still heavily believes that this company is doomed.

yeah, stock price, bro

The flaw in your argument is assuming all statements are equally likely to be true. Generally statements AGAINST someone's interest are reliable where self-serving statements are not.

Obviously Elon has a long track record of self-serving lies. That doesn't mean that it is hypocritical to think an admission that his company almost went bankrupt is true.

That being said despite superficial appearances I don't really think that admission is against his interest. It wasn't divulged accidentally or in response to difficult questioning. It was proferred willingly by Elon to make himself look more sympathetic and at the same time to make the Q3 results appear more heroic and impressive (despite the fact that the actual profits were pretty small, especially after backing out the regulatory credits.)

So in summary- admissions of known serial liars are still generally credible and that is why bears point to Elon's admission of near bankruptcy HOWEVER in this case I don't really think it was an admission- I think it was a backhanded self-serving lie.

This is an interesting Twitter thread. Apart from the below, a lot is pointing to demand being dead for $45K+ Model 3s. Considering they can't produce for under around $38K + at least $10K SG&A, and there is no capex underway that I know of for extra lines, this is bad. Even in the worst of worlds, I would expect Tesla to be run off their feet with orders, production and delivery right until the end of the credit, as happened in other countries. Major production slowdowns and availability for ordering for <2 week delivery are a horrible sign.

Best of all, the stock is near all time highs. What a gift.

If that's not all entirely made up it's pretty clear it's game over. There's no recovering from that outside of some form of bailout, like increasing the tax credit.

I don't believe they can mass produce a Model 3 for less than $35K + at least $5K SG&A, even with scale.

Everything hinges on high end (45K+) demand imo. Always has. If there is heaps they survive, if there isn't they die. They're borrowed to the eyeballs with everything mortgaged (including now future lease revenue) and have a lot to pay back, and equity markets can't absorb the $10b+ they need to survive and go to the next level.

Do investors do this much for other stocks? It seems there is so much emotional investment, as well as financial investment, for both the Tesla fans and the haters.

most $50B+ corporations aren't universally loved by the green left like tesla is. there's a lot of reasons they're emotional about the company. literally all of the longs are either emotional investors, idiots, or traders taking advantage of emotional investors and idiots.

aside from the green thing, people love the product, and ignoring all the reliability/service issues it's a pretty incredible product. it's easy to see how an idiot could get into a tesla, fall in love, and buy the stock with no regard for valuation.

the shorts are emotional because they know tesla is a fraud, and that elon is a fraud, and they're upset because he's getting away with it all while they lose money.

so no, this doesn't happen much for other stocks. tesla is special.

Elon saying Tesla was days away from bankruptcy is like that kid saying he was days from failing the exam.

Then he crammed and passed (if not aced) the exam anyway.

Yeah, I cannot count how many people I've run into who think Tesla is the next trillion dollar company, or that in the future we will not drive cars anymore because the word "car" will get replaced with "Tesla" instead, or how everyone will abandon living in houses and just live in their Teslas because they will be fully autonomous, self powered from solar city cells, and can go anywhere you want.

I'm not even exaggerating about those points. I've heard even more ridiculous bull cases.

Short side is also a big tilt because normally a short thesis only involves a few points or catalytic events, but Tesla literally ticks off every possible point you can possibly think of when building the short case, but yet the stock price gives no cares for some reason. It's like if you take Enron, and make the fraud blatant and in the open while the CEO openly taunts the SEC and DOJ.

Agree re production. But the ABS deal doesn’t change much (appears to be 50 bps) on lease payments front, just moves them from the warehouse to ABS which is a relatively standard way to structure auto lease finance.

Doubt this is made up... could be inventory misallocations in the US by region but much more likely is that all backlog is done now or in a few weeks (once lemur clears). Still not out of the question they bridge the gap to EU deliveries with maintenance shutdown etc, but hard to make that story work

Look at the rest of that twitter account. It's clearly some crazy person with an affinity for red underline highlighting, and a heaping of crazy. It's also clearly someone who is short.

I don't think you can take "Blondes for Elon" and their tweets as financial gospel.

And how is it field research? They took a test drive. If that counts, then I did field research at Chick-fil-A the other day; maybe I should do a 16-line tweet.

Hedge funds do this all the time on lots of stocks, either go themselves to stores and talk to storepeople and customers or pay people to watch customers going in and out. Commodities traders pay planes to fly over or pay for up-to-date satellite data. It's basic ground research. You gather your own facts. And it's surprisingly accurate; you can tell a lot about the state or trend of a company from simple things like this. myrnaFTW from these forums does this kind of stuff to estimate how brands are doing before earnings.
It's far from gospel, but it's an interesting anecdote, and it fits with other information we know. Musk said October 15 was the last date for 2018 delivery then it was November 30th. Right now for example the M3 website says "order now for 2018 delivery". Perhaps they're just stupid/lazy or want to collect customer deposits which they then keep for months/help keep them solvent, but it's a bit weird. A few days ago Musk tweeted you could still buy lots of inventory cars. On top of that production is down a lot for a week during what should be a large production drive, and has never gotten above about 4500/week.

And test drives are great. I recommend people who are short Tesla go test drive. You get a feel for the car and the buzz. You get a feel for the car owner bull mentality, who are like teenage girls who get excited when a performance car engine roars, except with electric cars and horny for the stock. It helps you understand the bull case. I like performance electric cars a lot, they a great ride and feel like the future.

Musk today on Twitter:
Sounds legit imo. Unlimited demand, big backlog, huge waitlist, still 420,000 reservations even after selling/cancellations! etc.

October: "Order by October 15 to guarantee delivery by year end"
November: "Order by November 30 and we can guarantee delivery by year end"

Now this. The cliff is two weeks away. If the bears are right on demand, we should see fun soon.