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Tesla Short Sellers Actually Made Over $1 Billion After Musk's Taking-Private Tweet (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
Investors betting that Tesla stock will lose value -- so-called "shorts" -- have made $1.2 billion since CEO Elon Musk first tweeted about taking the company private. Much of that gain came on Friday, after the New York Times published a revealing, emotional interview with Musk that drove Tesla stock down nearly 9%. The tally comes from a report released Friday by stock analytics firm S3 Partners. The Friday collapse helped reverse a price spike after Musk's August 7 Tweet saying he was "considering taking Tesla private at $420," about 18% higher than the stock's market value at the time.
According to S3, the subsequent surge in Tesla stock cost short positions $1.3 billion. But soon after, it became clear that Musk had exaggerated the certainty of his funding, and the SEC began a probe of his statements, driving the stock back down. On Friday, the Times interview with Musk detailed his 120-hour work weeks, lack of social life, and reliance on Ambien to sleep. That sent the stock down 9% in one day, for a total drop of 19% over 10 days. That gave $2.5 billion back to the shorts, for a net gain of $1.2 billion since Musk's going-private tweet.
Tesla remains the most-shorted stock on the American stock exchanges, and the researchers note that only 4% of shorts have actually cashed in these on-paper gains.
According to S3, the subsequent surge in Tesla stock cost short positions $1.3 billion. But soon after, it became clear that Musk had exaggerated the certainty of his funding, and the SEC began a probe of his statements, driving the stock back down. On Friday, the Times interview with Musk detailed his 120-hour work weeks, lack of social life, and reliance on Ambien to sleep. That sent the stock down 9% in one day, for a total drop of 19% over 10 days. That gave $2.5 billion back to the shorts, for a net gain of $1.2 billion since Musk's going-private tweet.
Tesla remains the most-shorted stock on the American stock exchanges, and the researchers note that only 4% of shorts have actually cashed in these on-paper gains.
Back when I frequented Drudge Report, if a link took me to infowars.com I would navigate away. It's a little crazy over there.
I agree with you completely. After the ban, I've been looking at his site occasionally to see what all the fuss is about, and just can't get interested in any of it.
Problem is, free speech means everyone gets to have their say. Banning Infowars was wrong, it was the 3rd click of the censorship ratchet, and it needs to be discussed in the arena of civil rights.
I think the second one(*) was taking away DailyStormer's domain registration and not letting them use it.
Even the Electronic Freedom Foundation worried over censoring DailyStormer.
We're well into the 3rd line of that "first they came for..." poem, and we really need to get this sorted out before the internet turns into a leftist utopian playland, where everyone agrees and speaking out is prohibited.
We really need to get this sorted out.
Maybe the government will step in and impose regulations.
It seems like we're headed that way.
(*) First one was MasterCard and Visa dropping Wikileaks simultaneously after posting the "collateral murder" video, isolating Wikileaks from $11 million in donations that were coming in.