Connect with us

Investor's Corner

Tesla (TSLA) stock up 99% since June as short sellers race to cover

Published

on

Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) breached the $370 mark after the opening bell on Monday, allowing the company to practically double its value from its lows in June, when the electric car maker traded as low as $179 per share.  Tesla has gone up over 99% between June and December, a significant victory for one of the most shorted companies in the market. 

The upwards movement of TSLA stock in recent weeks comes amidst a decline in short interest, as per data from NASDAQ. While there exists a large number of vocal TSLAQ members online who continue to bet against the company, it appears that more and more short-sellers are starting to cover their positions. As of last Wednesday alone, Tesla shorts were already down $1.22 billion in 2019 mark-to-market losses. 

https://twitter.com/SamTalksTesla/status/1206592296952696832?s=20

Tesla stock is seeing some momentum this week, following positive reports from China indicating that the country is suspending tariffs on automobiles and car parts coming in from the United States. Tesla’s higher-specced vehicles such as the Model 3 Performance and the Dual Motor AWD version will be benefiting from these tariff suspensions. 

Apart from this, Tesla appears to be making headway in its efforts to start delivering the Made-in-China Model 3 to local reservation holders. Over the past weeks, drone flyovers of the Gigafactory 3 complex have hinted at ongoing Model 3 mass production. Images and videos taken recently have also shown car carrier trucks transporting the locally-made Model 3 to China’s delivery centers. 

Advertisement

It’s not just Tesla China that is making some headway either. Over in Europe, preparations for Gigafactory 4’s construction are underway. Since Elon Musk announced that GF4 will be built in Germany, officials and regulators have spoken positively about the upcoming project. Recent updates have also pointed to Gigafactory 4 breaking ground even before its full approvals are secured. 

The year has not been easy for Tesla. Over the course of 2019, TSLA stock dipped to two-year lows, and it reached a point where even moderate bulls such as Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley released a $10 per share “worst case” price target on the company. Yet, despite shorts smelling blood in the water, Tesla was able to turn its fortunes around following the release of its third-quarter earnings report, which saw the company turn a surprise profit. Tesla stock has exhibited strength since then, practically doubling its value back in June as of Monday’s early trading. 

What is rather interesting is the fact that this rise may not even be Elon Musk’s once-predicted “short burn of the century” yet. Tesla is yet to show its fourth-quarter results, and while the company has some momentum, there is a very good chance of more upside if the electric car maker actually meets its production and delivery goals for 2019. Either way, the next few weeks will likely be historic for Tesla. 

As of writing, TSLA stock is trading +5.13% at $376.79 per share.

Advertisement

Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

Advertisement
Comments

Investor's Corner

Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent

Published

on

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.

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.

Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

Published

on

Credit: MarcoRP | X

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.

Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

Published

on

SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

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.

Continue Reading