Elon Musk Tweets About Tesla Sales, the SEC, and a Special Offer From SpaceX (marketwatch.com)

Tesla's model 3 is now one of the five top-selling sedans in America (while sales of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class are down 28 percent through September), Bloomberg reports. Elon Musk tweeted out a link to their article on Thursday -- but it was his other tweet, a satirical criticism of the SEC, that made headlines. MarketWatch reports: Tesla shares ended 7% lower on Friday as Wall Street reacted to Musk's tweet seemingly out of nowhere late Thursday about the "Shortseller Enrichment Commission." Musk also tweeted that day that short sellers were "value destroyers" and should be illegal. Friday's losses for Tesla "produced more than half a billion in paper profit for the shorts," S3 Partners LLC, which tracks real-time short interest data, said in a note. Since news of the Musk's settlement with the SEC, shorts are up $941 million, S3 Partners said. "Clearly short positions are building in the wake of strong selling by longs, as Musk demonstrates a refusal to keep away from controversy," the note said.
The article notes that last Saturday the SEC settled charges that Musk misled investors with a tweet about taking Tesla private. "Terms of the settlement included requiring Tesla to rein in Musk's social-media communications, but it was unclear when Tesla intends to implement that.... The settlement has yet to be court-approved."

On Friday Musk was back on point, tweeting out the news that Tesla owners "can refer someone to buy a Tesla & get any image they want laser etched in glass & sent to deep space for millions of years."

Comments

Re:SHort sellers are never a concern.

[Rei]

People who short the stock of have absolutely no affect on a company' operations. None.

Shorting inherently reduces the stock value. Hence, your argument is that the stock value has no effect on a company's operations. But this is obviously false; many things related to a company's ability to raise capital or obligations related to existing debt are tied to the company's stock price. Hence, shorting a stock inherently - on its own - hinders a company's finances.

Beyond this, however, shorting a company creates a strong incentive toward spreading FUD against a company. Indeed, this is the entire means by which "activist short sellers" such as Jim Chanos and Andrew Left operate. Activist short sellers coordinate their short positions with a negative PR campaigns against their targets. These can range from the aboveboard, such as interviews, to the nefarious, such as paying off "independent" analysts to write negative reports (such as what Chanos got caught doing in his Fairfax campaign), to the amateur, like the regular astroturfing campaigns we get on the Tesla forums.

When faced with an activist short campaign, companies have a few options. One is privatization. We saw how that went re: Tesla. The other is to decrease the company's dependence on outside capital, and thus decrease the significance of its stock price on the company's operations and to raise its credit score. While this is an effective strategy, it strongly hinders the company's growth rate. A company fighting off a short campaign in this manner has to heavily cut back on its least profitable activities and its investments in the future and instead focus only on its most profitable activities.

As for the rest of your post:

"Tesla is losing money": "Is" is a present tense verb. Meaning past Q3. We have not seen the Q3 report yet. The goal was to become sustainably profitable in Q3. We'll know in four weeks if it was a hit or a near miss.

"is buried in debt beyond a healthy level": Tesla's debt-to-equity ratio is 60% that of Ford's. I know some people will argue that, "Well, with the traditional automakers you shouldn't count their financing divisions, as they're profit-makers!". But their financial divisions are an essential part of their operations. When comparing companies, you compare all of their components, not just the fractions you want to. And more to the point, the traditional automakers' debt is a lot more risky than Tesla's. Defaulting on auto loans is one of the first things that happens during a financial downturn.

"Of course anyone pointing out those facts are called "trolls" or "shorts". Which he then bullies along with his cult following those people"": Irony alert: Sentence 1: Stop name calling! Sentence 2: Practice name calling!

What he did to that analyst during that conference call: Which analyst? One asked a question that was literally answered right at the top of the Q1 report that everyone was supposed to have read before joining the call. Boldfaced. By re-asking Tesla about that, he was basically accusing them of lying. The other was pushing a conspiracy theory that Tesla's demand was running out. It's five months later and it still hasn't happened, so clearly it was a boneheaded question.

" and to the blogger Montana Skeptic was just pure asshole.": Meh. Musk knew his boss. His boss was an early supporter and fan of Tesla.

"And when you add in the fact that CFOs don't stay": Tesla's CFO has been with the company since 2008.

"Also remember that Model S sales have tanked": They clearly have not, as per the delivery report. They increased over last quarter, and are well on their way to Tesla's max annual 100k S+X production capacity.

"I have a sneaky suspicion that Q3 isn't going to be that good" - Please mortgage your house and short the company, since you both hate Tesla and love short selling.