Tesla short sellers are being burned for massive losses since last week’s Earnings Call. Since then, the stock has catapulted over 34 percent.
Tesla shares first exploded last week as the automaker announced it would accelerate its plans for a new vehicle lineup. Despite a miss on earnings, Tesla had a lot of positive elements in its call, which investors seemingly saw as overwhelmingly bullish.
However, the stock continued to shoot upward this morning as Tesla gained approval from China for Full Self-Driving (FSD). Shares are up over 14 percent on the day alone.
While investors are cheering on the prospect of Tesla shares continuing to trend upward, short sellers are not. Skeptics of Tesla and CEO Elon Musk are feeling a substantial burn after the stock surge over the past several days, which has culminated in roughly $5.5 billion in losses.
S3 Partners, an analytics firm, has been tracking the losses of Tesla short sellers since last week’s climb. Today’s surge alone took short sellers for $2.93 billion. It was profitable for the month up until this point, even with last week’s climb.
For the year, short sellers are still up — significantly.
S3 shows that they still have booked over $4 billion in profits as Tesla shares are down around 20 percent for the year.
Tesla is the third-largest short in S3’s database, behind Nvidia and Microsoft. However, other firms, like Hazeltree, have listed Tesla as the most crowded security in its research.
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