Investor's Corner
Famed hedge fund betting against Tesla reports massive loss to customers, Elon Musk trolls with gift offering
David Einhorn, a staunch Tesla critic and owner of Greenlight Capital fund, revealed on Tuesday that his bet against the electric car maker resulted in heavy losses for his firm during the first half of 2018. In Q2 alone, Greenlight Capital lost 5.4%, bringing the fund’s losses from January to June to 18.3%.
In a letter to investors acquired by Reuters on Tuesday, Einhorn revealed that his stance against Tesla aggravated Greenlight’s grim returns. During the second quarter, Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) rose 29%, becoming the hedge fund’s “second biggest loser.” Einhorn later added in a later note that the fund’s returns fell 0.4% more in July, bringing Greenlight’s total losses to 18.6% for the year.
Einhorn, who leased a Model S, has pushed the notion that Tesla’s electric cars are unreliable and even dangerous, while criticizing the California-based company’s cash burn. Despite his complaints, as well as increasingly negative media coverage on Tesla and Elon Musk, the company’s stock has remained strong, turning Einhorn’s short bet into substantial losses. In his letter to investors, the hedge fund owner admitted that mistakes had been made, and Greenlight’s returns over the past three years have been “far worse than we could have imagined.” Due to the fund’s performance, Einhorn revealed that some investors have run out of patience and asked for their money back.
Regardless of his fund’s losses, Einhorn still maintains his short position against Tesla, stating that he doubts the Model 3 could be “produced profitably anytime soon, if ever.” Einhorn also criticized Tesla’s ongoing initiatives to rush the Model 3 to reservation holders, as well as Elon Musk’s “erratic and desperate” behavior on social media.
“Right now the market is telling us we are wrong, wrong, wrong about nearly everything. We wonder whether surge production techniques to support self-congratulatory tweets are economically efficient ways of ramping production, or whether customers will be happy with the quality of a car rush through production to prove a point to short sellers. The most striking feature of the quarter is that Elon Musk appears erratic and desperate,” Einhorn wrote.
The Greenfield Capital owner also wrote in his letter that he has already made moves to stem the firm’s losses. Einhorn, for one, stated that he had covered most of the firm’s short position on Netflix Inc. between January and April. He also exited a bet on Resona Holdings, a Japanese bank, while selling Dillard’s at a loss. Furthermore, Einhorn covered a 5-year bet against Elekta AB with a small gain.
In response to reports of Einhorn opting not to renew his Model S’ lease, Tesla CEO Elon Musk fired off a tweet trolling the hedge fund owner.
Tragic. Will send Einhorn a box of short shorts to comfort him through this difficult time.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 1, 2018
Tesla is set to release its Q2 financial report after markets close today, followed by an earnings call at 2:30 p.m. PST (5:30 p.m. EST). Consensus among Wall Street analysts suggests that Tesla would be reporting a loss of $2.81 per share, as well as a revenue of around $3.97 billion. Tesla is also expected to release figures about the Model 3’s ongoing ramp and delivery guidance for the rest of the year, considering that the company has recently crossed the 200,000-vehicle mark that triggers a phase-out period for the $7,500 federal tax credit granted to buyers of new electric cars.
As Tesla heads into what could very well be an earnings call signifying a turning point for the company, reports have also emerged from sources that the electric car maker plans to invest $5 billion to construct Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai. Tesla is reportedly looking to raise funds in China to finance a portion of the investment needed for the factory, which is expected to start producing vehicles by 2020.
Investor's Corner
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Tesla’s strong Q2 deliveries: Four key drivers behind the surprise
