
Tesla shorts take an estimated $2 bil of losses in Elon Musk’s ‘next level burn’ - john58
https://electrek.co/2018/06/13/tesla-tsla-shorts-billio-losses-elon-musk-next-level-burn/
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nscalf
It really seems like traditional investing has yet to fully understand how to
assess the value of Tesla. A lot of the value seems to be wrapped in from
people's hopes/expectations of the future of energy/vehicles. Tesla is more
than a car/battery producer, it seems to also be a figurehead for clean energy
to a large extent.

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olliej
Yeah I don’t understand people who short - the downside is functionally
unbound. Maybe it’s “investors” and “managers” using other people’s money?

I’m sure my risk/reward bias would be skewed if the downside was “less
commission income” rather than “well there goes my retirement”

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Someone
In general, the higher the variance in outcomes, the higher the expected
payout of an investment.

Also, if you have more money you can decrease the variance in _your_ payout by
making multiple uncorrelated (1) investments.

That can make investments that are insane for the average citizen look as huge
opportunities for the very rich.

For example, consider a game using a fair coin “put in $100k, heads you lose
everything, tails we pay out $201k”.

If you have 100k in savings for retirement, you probably wouldn’t want to play
that game. People who have $100M, on the other hand, might line up to play it
a thousand times, as that game, on average, pays out 0.5% per game played.

I would hope manny of those shorting Tesla must have thought this “game” is
similar: high risk, but an expected payout that is better than that of less
risky investments.

(1) there’s a risk there, as totally uncorrelated investments do not exist
anymore in a global economy.

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marketgod
Shorts help us find companies like Enron.

