Short Sellers Earn $770M In Profit From Tesla Deliveries Miss

Tesla, Inc. TSLA shares were bouncing back a bit Friday after an 8.2-percent drop Thursday following a major first-quarter deliveries miss. Tesla is one of the biggest battleground stocks on Wall Street, but Tesla short sellers certainly came out on top this week.

Tesla’s 31-percent quarterly drop in vehicle deliveries was all short sellers needed to see, according to financial technology and analytics firm S3 Partners. Analyst Ihor Dusaniwsky said Thursday that he saw a reversal in the recent trend in Tesla short selling this week.

“We are seeing increased short selling today, as short sellers are increasing their exposure in today’s price drop and expected further weakness,” he wrote.

Prior to Thursday, Tesla’s outstanding short position was down 675,000 in the previous week. Roughly 31 million shares of Tesla are currently held short at a borrow fee of 0.3 percent.

That number represents about $9 billion in bets against Tesla, or around 24.5 percent of the stock’s public float.

Short Selling On The Rise

Overall, short sellers have been leaning into their bearish bets against Tesla in 2019. Dusaniwsky said Tesla’s short position is up 21 percent year-to-date.

Tesla short sellers enjoyed paper profits of more than $750 million Thursday and are now up more than $1.7 billion year-to-date. Even after Friday morning’s 2-percent bounce, Tesla shares are down 18.2 percent overall so far in 2019.

Over the past five years, Tesla stock has significantly lagged the performance of the overall market. Tesla shares are up just 28.4 percent since April 2014, roughly half the 54.9-percent gain by the S&P 500 in that time.

Related Links:

It Didn't Take Long For Short Sellers To Pile Into Lyft

Tesla Analysts Weigh In On Huge Deliveries Miss

Photo courtesy of Tesla.