
Tesla’s Stock Is Up 40% in Two Days. What’s Going On? - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/tesla-stock-price.html
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mardifoufs
This is 100% just the short squeeze. The TSLA was heavily shorted by people
who were really committed to the short and held on until the margin calls.

What's worst is that there was an uptick of short interest when it got to
500-550, because it looked like it reached a top. So probably "2" short
squeezes in a row in this case

This is really devastating for the huge and almost fanatical TSLA short
community. Some people/hedge funds have been short for years with a certainty
that TSLA will totally collapse at some point. They may still be right but,
but I'd be surprised if any of the long time (retail) shorters haven't been
margin called at this point! I think that on monday only, short positions lost
about 2.5b$.

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xkjkls
The Tesla short community has always been full of much more professional
investors who pay attention to diversification and position sizing. People
like Chanos/Einhorn, with probably a $100 million+ short position, are only
risking a few percent of their funds. It’s relatively easy for them to
liquidate other positions to provide collateral in the case the stock goes up.
Also many own options to cap losses from going up.

As for the Tesla retail shorters, I still don’t know anyone in that camp who
has their entire capital bet against Tesla. Tesla longs are a much different
story...

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_prototype_
Millennials are buying Tesla like crazy, without any real financial
understanding of the company. Hopefully they are not burned too much.

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mardifoufs
Yeah it is kind of worrying how hyped up the stock is because of the fantastic
last 2 weeks. I 100% could understand "hype" investing in Tesla when it was
under 350-400, since the brand is cool and they make a good product even if
the fundamentals have always been shaky.

But everyone needs to know that $TSLA reaching today's levels is NOT due to
people wanting to buy it, it's mostly short positions being "forcibly"
covered.

But some people just seem to always invest after returns reach crazy high
unsustainable returns, not before. I know a lot of people around me who went
from penny stocks->crypto->weed stocks-> and now seem to talk about tsla a
lot, never buying anything before it peaked. I don't know if there's a name
for them

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quickthrowman
> I don’t know if there’s a name for them.

There’s a few: bagholder, sucker, etc

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ianai
Or better yet, what will stop it?

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xkjkls
Stocks eventually trade on reality. Sometimes it takes awhile though.

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sanguy
I got off the rollercoaster today. Hurt to do so after 4 years, and still
regretting it a bit.

I really want to see TSLA a success as so much potential and cool disruptive
tech to an industry that wants to keep us all in the dark ages.

