Live data from Hacker News

Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

cnbc.com

51–60 of 301 posts

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#51

Teslas price is just too high. I think they will be very successful and become a big, dominant car maker. But their price only makes sense if they end up being the only car maker left. That's not realistic. Building an electric car is not that hard, especially if Tesla already did all the hard lifting for you. For a while I was thinking that the battery play - becoming the number 1 battery supplier - will justify the…

On the internet no one knows you are a dog :)

This comment reminds me of a car auction i went to years ago: This 2 yr old car with around 250,000kms on it came up, likely used for long distance travel as this was in rural Australia. The car looked like a 2 year old car inside and out, it was completely normal except for the odometer reading. The auctioneer used the line "No one can read the odometer when you're driving on by". I wouldn't have bought it, but i liked the line.

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#52

Personally I loved every bit of the GME show and I'd love to see short sellers get squeezed on TSLA as well. Shove it to them. We don't need pessimists in this world.

> Shove it to them. We don't need pessimists in this world.

Of course not. We only need optimism to keep driving the stock market and other valuations only higher so that they are no longer rooted in reality/math/science and are driven solely by optimism.

And, let's keep burning the fossil fuels since we don't need pessimism that the climate change people seem to be spreading. Oh, wait, that goes against TSLA, so we need that pessimism.

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#53
post #9

As options can grant the buyer significant leverage with each option representing 100 shares, the sum they came up with for the article title is likely a misrepresentation, and if the bet goes wrong notably less money will probably be lost. Either way I don't think articles of this nature are particularly useful however.

So how would you go about making an educated reverse engineering claim on the stake at risk without knowing his other legs nor expiry dates? Is it even possible? How about a wide range?

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#54
post #10

The only new reveal is the dollar figure. Burry has been very openly (and vocally) short on Tesla for a while now. He has been Tweeting a bunch about it since September last year. Tesla shares are up ~75% since those original Tweets. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" applies to both amateur traders and the most seasoned investor/genius alike.

And Burry is intimately familiar with this, brushing close to that reality as illustrated in The Big Short.

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#55

nb: According to the article, $530m is the notional value of his puts, not the premium he paid. 8k contracts is a fairly substantial trade on a $566 stock, but it's not as sensational as the headline makes it sound.

So how would you go about making an educated reverse engineering claim on the stake at risk without knowing his other legs nor expiry dates? Is it even possible? How about a wide range?

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#56
post #3

I'm having a hard time with this one since from the article it doesn't seem like Burry is seeing anything that isn't very well discussed/analyzed already regarding Tesla. Short sellers have gotten very burned in the past in gambles like this, but they've also sometimes made money. Given how historically irrational the market has been about Tesla, this just seems like a gamble rather than the well-reasoned short posit…

Tesla is a bubble for sure but this is way too risky. Sure, we don’t know the strikes or expiry dates but there are plenty of fan boys to take on the fight against Burry ad infinitum. The market can become irrational longer than you can become solvent. I'm 100% on Burry camp though.

It's a surprise to see Keynes in here, glad to know.

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#57

Personally I loved every bit of the GME show and I'd love to see short sellers get squeezed on TSLA as well. Shove it to them. We don't need pessimists in this world.

Short sellers aren’t pessimists. They’re realists.

It's not even about that. It's just about not wasting an opportunity to make money. Some stocks go through cycles: growth, then correction, then growth again. Shorting stock during market corrections helps you maximize your profits.

I mean, I can imagine Michael Burry cashing $200M profits when Tesla price goes down, and then switching sides and going long. The most important thing in the stock markets is to remain rational. Don't let your personal like or dislike of Elon Musk stop you from making money.

And btw: since March 31st Tesla stock price fell down about $100

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#58
post #39

Teslas price is just too high. I think they will be very successful and become a big, dominant car maker. But their price only makes sense if they end up being the only car maker left. That's not realistic. Building an electric car is not that hard, especially if Tesla already did all the hard lifting for you. For a while I was thinking that the battery play - becoming the number 1 battery supplier - will justify the…

Tesla isn't a car company, though. They even removed "Motors" from their name years ago - showing wider interest, and not just batteries. Solar roofing as well, and others. I don't hold TSLA right now, regretfully, I entered pre-split at $27 and sold at $200. I also think the current price is way too high, for what it's worth. WAY too high. But it's not at all about cars, at least not for me, when trying to justify t…

Take a look at the "Common Sense Skeptic" youtube channel. Tesla's purchase of Solar City is a scandal on itself, it was never a play on entering the solar roof business. It was just a bail out using Tesla's shareholders money to save Musks and his business partners (which were Musks cousins btw) investments. This channel also destroys all the hype surrounding Starship, it's a joy to watch.

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#59
All the weak shorts have washed out or got tired of bleeding premiums for the past 3-5 years - it will be interesting to see if this will reignite that community to put them back on. Long Tesla is very much a pro-cyclical business, if you read between the lines, Burry is also expressing his $500mm opinion that this cycle is coming to an end.

Re: Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530M bet against Tesla

#60

Teslas price is just too high. I think they will be very successful and become a big, dominant car maker. But their price only makes sense if they end up being the only car maker left. That's not realistic. Building an electric car is not that hard, especially if Tesla already did all the hard lifting for you. For a while I was thinking that the battery play - becoming the number 1 battery supplier - will justify the…

> I think they will be very successful and become a big, dominant car maker.

I'm not sure really. They keep throwing the entire company at insanely poorly leveraged bets with unfulfilled promises. (Cybertruck is on track to be delivered at a longer timeframe than any car tesla has ever made, they haven't even built the factory or unveiled the final design, same for Semi and Roadster, the new Model S was supposed to be shipping in..uh.. March?) I think they are scaled too big to breathe and survive, eventually being bought in a post-Elon world by a Ford, GM, or possibly Google or Apple.

Post reply on HN