Joe Skipper/Reuters
- Investors betting against Tesla were hit hard by the electric-car maker’s stock surge last week.
- “Oh damn, I got my butt kicked,” private investor Robert Matjeles told The Wall Street Journal.
- Tesla shares have skyrocketed 350% in six months, and hit an all-time high last week.
- Notorious short-seller Jim Chanos told The Journal he wouldn’t stop betting against Tesla.
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Tesla bears are licking their wounds after the electric-car maker’s stock skyrocketed last week.
“Oh damn, I got my butt kicked” is a common sentiment among short-sellers, Robert Majteles told The Wall Street Journal.
“It’s the biggest set of losses that I’ve ever taken in 20 years,” the private investor, who closed his negative position this month, told the newspaper.
Tesla shares have surged 350% in the past six months, and touched an all-time high of over $900 last week. They were up 8.5% at $810 in early trading on Monday. The gains are bad news for short-sellers, who lost $2.5 billion last Monday after Tesla spiked 20%.
“Tesla is my widowmaker,” Amy Wu Silverman, a managing director at RBC Capital Markets who bought negative put options on the stock, told The Journal.
Big-name investors such as Steve Eisman of “The Big Short” have hit their pain thresholds and halted their bets against Tesla. However, notorious short-seller and longtime Tesla bear Jim Chanos told The Journal that he wouldn’t stop shorting the stock.
“This is a car company, yes a higher-end one, but it’s still a car company, with the same low margins of other auto makers,” Chanos told the newspaper.
He added that Tesla’s recent profits reflect its sales of tax credits rather than cars. Tesla accounts for around 2% of the portfolio of Chanos’ hedge fund, Kynikos Associates, The Journal said, citing people close to the matter.
Other skeptics, including activist short-seller Andrew Left and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, have warned Tesla’s rally isn’t sustainable.
“Do I think that this is an indication of euphoria or an indicator of a party where the punch bowl has been aggressively spiked later in the night?” Robert Luciano, VGI’s portfolio manager, asked rhetorically on an earnings call last week. “It certainly feels like it.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk celebrated the rally last week by tweeting a trio of fire emojis, despite downplaying the stock price as a “distraction” just last year. The rising share price is also making his decision to use Tesla stock to acquire SolarCity in 2014 look more and more unwise.
