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Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

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Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#361

Post by imcoconut »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #338
qaq wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does short 20% of FB float it will sure move

I'm not so sure. What direction will it "sure move" if you short 20% of FB float? You have to borrow a stock to short it from someone, so the stock that you short is not actually sold just lent.

The price would definitely move down if you sold 20% of facebook's float. The market doesn't care that you borrowed and are the one selling (as opposed to the party you borrowed it from selling them), all that matters is that 20% of the shares are being sold.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#362

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mikestew wrote: post #241
kasey_junk wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantically shorting doesn’t have to be borrowing the underlying instrument. Put options are another way to trade on the idea that a stock will go down. I’d actually bet it’s the more common way. It would still be colloquially referred to as being short.

That's actually the opposite of "pedantically" given that you're playing loose with the definition. Pedantically, shorting is selling a financial instrument you don't own, with the idea (though it is not a requirement to fit the definition) that you'll give it back later by buying at a price lower than it is now. What you described is options trading, one method of which hedges against declines in stock price. Yeah,…

"Short selling" refers to selling borrowed shares. "Being short" is the opposite of "being long" and refers to exposure, irrespective of the instruments or methods used to attain it. TL; DR one can be short through options or short selling.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#364

Post by [deleted] »

yread wrote: post #335
onetimemanytime wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! I Googled and there it is: *"At the end of 2016, Musk had 11,420,723 shares pledged as collateral. At the end of 2015, it was "4,000,000 shares of which are pledged as collateral to secure certain personal indebtedness owed to Morgan Stanley."" https://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/1-reason-why-elon-musk-migh... His lifestyle isn't the big problem, IMO. He's not Johnny Depp, he's way richer. That money most be going…

Does that mean his debt increased by 7M shares? At ~250 a piece? Almost 2B$? Is that what he actually owes or is it more like a line-of-credit up to 2B$ He's burning money faster than Tesla!

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#365

Post by badwolf »

metalsahu wrote: post #282
phdp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sent shorts to David Einhorn https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/elon-musk-ma...

It was a company, Chubbies, that sent short shorts to David Einhorn not Elon. https://insideevs.com/chubbies-sends-short-shorts-tesla-shor...

Heh. That's actually kind of a chuckleworthy story. Thanks for that.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#366

Post by lsh123 »

NickM wrote: post #37
simias wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super knowledgeable in the stock market, what would he have gained from destroying the shorts? I understand that shorts are effectively a bet that the stock will go down but do they actually damage the company in any way? At a glance it sounds like trying to break the thermometer because you think it's too cold out there, the stock wasn't at risk because of the shorts, instead there were shorts because some i…

If you short a stock, you profit when that company does poorly; since Tesla is one of the most shorted stocks out there, we have many people trying to spread FUD via blog posts/tweets/etc in hopes that they can drive the stock price down. (Or in some cases even going to extremes like fraudulently submitting reports to the NHTSA claiming design flaws and problems with Tesla cars.) This has the side effect of damaging…

I don’t think Musk needs any help in driving Tesla stock down ;)

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#367

Post by manicdee »

Note: no criminal probe. This is hyperbole.

Note: Martha Stewart did worse and was only found guilty on the coverup and fraud after the fact.

Note: hit piece by Bloomberg, clearly attempting to manipulate stock price as they have done for years without any prosecution.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#368

Post by stephengillie »

meddlepal wrote: post #291
onetimemanytime wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Imagine a prosecutor telling a jury that Elon funds a lavish lifestyle (with lots of details of the excess) with loans against his Tesla stock. Not going anywhere. Even if Tesla goes to zero, Musk still is a billionaire, 10 times over with SpaceX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Ownership,_funding_and_... It's not greed, he just hates that some don't bow to him.

Hubris.

Is it schadenfreude to hate hubris?

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#369

Post by nickik »

delecti wrote: post #336
nickik wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have scaled their manufacturing quite well be now. They are not top of the line but the have a real mass production car. Have you actually looked at the production numbers of those other EVs? Because there is nobody outside of Tesla that has mass produced EV and even more imprtantly, to do it with profit mergin per car. Teslas are the Top 3 most sold EVs in the US market. The model 3 is by now equaling the sum o…

It's impossible to separate the higher demand for Tesla from their higher sales. It's possible that their sales are higher because they can make more, but it seems more likely that their sales are higher because demand for Tesla is so much higher. What's clear is that we know Tesla has had (and may continue to have) issues with production. Meanwhile I can't find anything suggesting there were any production issues wi…

The Bolt and the Leaf has less production issue because they are far smaller production numbers. Also, we don't have close to as much news about problems in their plants.

Guess why you don't know about them, because they don't sell well or are delayed.

Tesla will always have production issue because they are always trying to grow. Every large company has production issues. The question is how much product can you produce at what price.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#370

Post by stephengillie »

simias wrote: post #36
zwerdlds wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorts drive the price down, making it more expensive for the company to borrow from the market by selling stock. They have to sell more shares to receive a similar amount.

I obviously lack a piece of the puzzle here, let me see if I get this right: a short means borrowing stock, selling it then rebuying it later (betting that the price would have fallen in order to turn a profit) before giving it back to its original owner. I suppose if everybody shorts at the same time the huge amount of stock being sold could drive the price momentarily down, but then again the opposite happens when…

Shorting a stock is like renting a car for a year, and selling it - because you think you can buy another car in a year, and still make money after paying the rental company. This is possible in this example because all cars are identical.
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