Investor's Corner
Elon Musk’s near-$10M TSLA investment makes his battle with short-sellers personal
On Monday afternoon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased nearly $10M in Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA). Just a week after an eventful earnings call with analysts and a Youtuber, Musk added 27,097 shares of Tesla to his portfolio. To add some perspective, that’s just .08% of Musk’s total 33,665,421 shares in the company, worth north of $10.2B.
Musk’s stock purchase today wasn’t about increasing his ownership in the company; he has a hefty stock compensation plan for that. Musk was sending a message to the short-sellers of TSLA. The number of short-sellers has surpassed Musk’s holding for the first time in history, now rumored to be near 40M shares.
As of the last reporting date, 4/9/18 (available on 4/24/18), there were 38,258,654 shares held short in the company. That’s the highest in Tesla’s history, making the electric car maker the most shorted company by the amount of equity at stake. There will be an update on the total size of the Tesla short position this Wednesday after markets close, so stay tuned.
While this is nothing new for Tesla, Musk is starting to take it personally. His company is being hit every which way in the media, and that doesn’t feel good. I mean, Bloomberg created a graphic of Musk burning cash with his own flamethrowers, that can’t feel good.
Bloomberg’s Graphic depicting Musk burning Tesla’s cash with his own ‘Boring Company’ flamethrowers.
Graphic: Bloomberg/Getty Image (Animation: Hannah Recht for Bloomberg)
Typically over the past few years, Musk has made several statements acknowledging the high-value the market has placed on his company. Musk’s tone changed last week.
“Oh and uh, short burn of the century coming soon. Flamethrowers should arrive just in time,” Musk tweeted after the company announced they had burned upwards of $1B in free cash flow.
So why should short sellers believe Musk?
Valid question. The very notion of a short position makes it clear they do not believe in Musk. But history is on Musk’s side.
Let’s flashback to April 2013. At the time, I owned shares at Tesla, purchasing the stock just 8 months earlier, shy of $30/share. This was when the Model S production ramp issues and cash burn plagued Tesla’s stock. But on April 1, 2013, Tesla told investors that they should expect a quarterly profit to be reported for the first quarter. The stock shot up 16% that day and continued to rally for several months, gaining 455% over the next 6 months.
Just before these massive gains, Musk warned in a Fox Business interview that he thinks “it is very unwise to be shorting Tesla, it’s very unwise. There is a tsunami of hurt coming for the shorts.”
Musk is again facing similar challenges with the Model 3 — production ramp issues, a media blitz, and a massive amount of cash being burned. While it is still to be seen if Musk and the Tesla team of 42,022 employees can impress investors, I certainly wouldn’t be sleeping comfortably with a Tesla short position.
When asked on Twitter how this ‘upcoming pain’ for shorts compares to the last round, Musk responded with, “It will be next level. These are really big numbers.”
Disclaimer: This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Teslarati and its owners. Christian Prenzler does not have a position in Tesla Inc. or any of its competitors and does not have plans to do so in the next 30 days.
Investor's Corner
Tesla analyst realizes one big thing about the stock: deliveries are losing importance
Tesla analyst Dan Levy of Barclays realized one big thing about the stock moving into 2026: vehicle deliveries are losing importance.
As a new era of Tesla seems to be on the horizon, the concern about vehicle deliveries and annual growth seems to be fading, at least according to many investors.
Even CEO Elon Musk has implied at times that the automotive side, as a whole, will only make up a small percentage of Tesla’s total valuation, as Optimus and AI begin to shine with importance.
He said in April:
“The future of the company is fundamentally based on large-scale autonomous cars and large-scale and large volume, vast numbers of autonomous humanoid robots.”
Almost all of Tesla’s value long-term will be from AI & robots, both vehicle & humanoid
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 11, 2023
Levy wrote in a note to investors that Tesla’s Q4 delivery figures “likely won’t matter for the stock.” Barclays said in the note that it expects deliveries to be “soft” for the quarter.
In years past, Tesla analysts, investors, and fans were focused on automotive growth.
Cars were truly the biggest thing the stock had to offer: Tesla was a growing automotive company with a lot of prowess in AI and software, but deliveries held the most impact, along with vehicle pricing. These types of things had huge impacts on the stock years ago.
In fact, several large swings occurred because of Tesla either beating or missing delivery estimates:
- January 3, 2022: +13.53%, record deliveries at the time
- January 3, 2023: -12.24%, missed deliveries
- July 2, 2024: +10.20%, beat delivery expectations
- October 3, 2022: -8.61%, sharp miss due to Shanghai factory shutdown
- July 2, 2020: +7.95%, topped low COVID-era expectations with sizeable beat on deliveries
It has become more apparent over the past few quarters that delivery estimates have significantly less focus from investors, who are instead looking for progress in AI, Optimus, Cybercab, and other projects.
These things are the future of the company, and although Tesla will always sell cars, the stock is more impacted by the software the vehicle is running, and not necessarily the vehicle itself.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.
Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.
It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.
Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.
He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.
Musk replied, basically confirming it:
As usual, Eric is accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.
AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.
It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.
The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Full Self-Driving statistic impresses Wall Street firm: ‘Very close to unsupervised’
The data shows there was a significant jump in miles traveled between interventions as Tesla transitioned drivers to v14.1 back in October. The FSD Community Tracker saw a jump from 441 miles to over 9,200 miles, the most significant improvement in four years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving performance and statistics continue to impress everyone, from retail investors to Wall Street firms. However, one analyst believes Tesla’s driving suite is “very close” to achieving unsupervised self-driving.
On Tuesday, Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter said that Tesla’s recent launch of Full Self-Driving version 14 increased the number of miles traveled between interventions by a drastic margin, based on data compiled by a Full Self-Driving Community Tracker.
🚨 Piper Sandler reiterated its Overweight rating and $500 PT on Tesla $TSLA stock
Analyst Alexander Potter said FSD is near full autonomy and latest versions showed the largest improvement in disengagements, from 440 miles to 9,200 miles between critical interventions pic.twitter.com/u4WCLfZcA9
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) December 9, 2025
The data shows there was a significant jump in miles traveled between interventions as Tesla transitioned drivers to v14.1 back in October. The FSD Community Tracker saw a jump from 441 miles to over 9,200 miles, the most significant improvement in four years.
Interestingly, there was a slight dip in the miles traveled between interventions with the release of v14.2. Piper Sandler said investor interest in FSD has increased.
Full Self-Driving has displayed several improvements with v14, including the introduction of Arrival Options that allow specific parking situations to be chosen by the driver prior to arriving at the destination. Owners can choose from Street Parking, Parking Garages, Parking Lots, Chargers, and Driveways.
Additionally, the overall improvements in performance from v13 have been evident through smoother operation, fewer mistakes during routine operation, and a more refined decision-making process.
Early versions of v14 exhibited stuttering and brake stabbing, but Tesla did a great job of confronting the issue and eliminating it altogether with the release of v14.2.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk also recently stated that the current v14.2 FSD suite is also less restrictive with drivers looking at their phones, which has caused some controversy within the community.
Although we tested it and found there were fewer nudges by the driver monitoring system to push eyes back to the road, we still would not recommend it due to laws and regulations.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.2.1 texting and driving: we tested it
With that being said, FSD is improving significantly with each larger rollout, and Musk believes the final piece of the puzzle will be unveiled with FSD v14.3, which could come later this year or early in 2026.
Piper Sandler reaffirmed its $500 price target on Tesla shares, as well as its ‘Overweight’ rating.
Tesla Model Y Standard stuns in new range test, besting its Premium siblings
Xpeng CEO: Tesla FSD 14.2 has developed “near-Level 4” performance
