Investor's Corner
Tesla short-seller explains losses, reduced position after TSLA’s rise in late October
Jan Petter Sissener is not a careless investor. Being one of short-sellers betting against Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA), the Norwegian businessman and hedge fund manager has been rewarded in the past due to dips in the electric car maker’s stock. During the third quarter, though, things did not go according to plan, and Sissener Canopus, the fund that Sissener manages, saw its worst loss in two years.
Sissener’s losses on October were almost a stroke of irony. The short-seller noted to Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv that he actually took a very careful stance at the beginning of the month, even adjusting his fund’s share weight to about 50%. Despite this, Sissener Canopus still fell 5.5%. In a report to his clients, Sissener admitted that one of the main reasons behind the fund’s losses was Tesla, which saw a steep rise at the end of October, fueled by the company’s surprisingly strong third-quarter earnings. Sissener’s bets in two other companies, Transocean and Elkem, did not pan out as well.
Sissener noted to the Norwegian publication that he does not understand Tesla’s third-quarter figures, and that he is presently trying to investigate the company’s numbers. While the fund manager stated that he is not ruling out an increased short position against the company in the near future, Sissener noted that he had reduced his short position on Tesla nonetheless.
“October became a painful month for world stock markets, and although we were very careful and had a lot of indexes, some of our key positions dropped significantly more than the markets. We had timed the market right, but lost on single shares. We have done two things (on Tesla). Firstly, we took a little profit when the stock reached $ 250. Then we weighed a little after the quarterly figures came,” he said.
As Tesla’s short-sellers begin to feel some pressure, some of the company’s supporters are expressing optimistic forecasts for the electric car maker. In a recent interview with CNBC, for example, billionaire investor Ron Baron reiterated his statement that Tesla might be a $1 trillion company by 2030. When asked if he has any reservations about Tesla’s capability to become consistently cash-flow positive, Baron stated that he remains confident in the company and Elon Musk.
“As far as the cash flow goes, when I look at the numbers, it doesn’t appear to be a problem. Elon Musk says it’s not a problem. I take him at his word. And he could have sold equity a year and a half ago at $370, $380 a share, people scrambling to buy, he chose not to. You have these businesses that they invest, and when they’re investing, they penalize profitability. (They’re) at the point now where incremental investments are going to be profitable. They are now doing 5,000 cars a week. They’re gonna be able to do for Model 3, for virtually no additional investment, they’re gonna get to 7,000 cars a week,” Baron said.
Wall Street analyst Maynard Um of Macquarie Research also adopted an optimistic stance on Tesla for the coming quarters. In a note last Thursday, the analyst stated that the company “checks all the boxes” except for one to be included in the S&P 500. While it remains to be seen if Tesla can stay profitable, Um nevertheless stated that a steady demand for the Model S and X, as well as improving production numbers of the Model 3, could allow the electric car maker to be eligible for the S&P 500, possibly sometime next year.
“While (Tesla) still has to prove it can sustain profitability, we believe the company will achieve this last eligibility requirement driven by steady demand for Model S & X, increasing production to meet Model 3 demand, and potential for meaningful (Zero Emission Vehicle) credit revenue,” the analyst wrote.
There is no doubt that Tesla’s third-quarter results were a pleasant surprise for the company’s investors. That said, Tesla’s current strategies, such as the introduction of the Mid Range Model 3, VIN filings at record batches, and Panasonic’s additional battery cell production lines in Gigafactory 1, suggest that Q4 might be even better. In an extensive interview with tech journalist Kara Swisher during the Recode Decode podcast, Elon Musk even noted that Tesla is actually capable of producing 6,000-6,500 Model 3 per week now, though such a feat would require a lot of overtime from the company’s workers.
-
“We’re certainly over the hump on Model 3 production. For us, making 5,000 cars in a week for Model 3 is not a big deal. That’s just normal. Now we’re working on raising to 6,000 and then 7,000 Model 3s a week, while still keeping costs under control. We could probably do 6,000 or more, maybe 6,500 Model 3s a week right now, but it would have to stress people out and do tons of overtime,” Musk said.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading at -1.14% at $346.50 per share.
Watch billionaire investor Ron Baron’s take on Tesla’s in the video below.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
-
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
-
The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
-
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Autonomous vehicle red tape gets slashed by Trump Administration
Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years
