Short sellers lost more money betting against Tesla than any other company last year
CNN
Here’s something sure to make Elon Musk smile – short sellers, those investors who placed bets that the value of Tesla shares were going to go down, lost a combined $12.2 billion last year, more than short sellers lost on any other company in 2023.
Here’s something sure to make Elon Musk smile – short sellers, those investors who placed bets that the value of Tesla shares were going to go down, lost a combined $12.2 billion last year, more than short sellers lost on any other company in 2023. That estimate, from markets analytics firm S3 Partners, isn’t a shock – Tesla shares slightly more than doubled during the course of the year. But for the shorts to take that kind of hit, there needs to be not only gains for the shares, but also a large group betting the other way. With US stock indexes ending the year near record highs – the S&P 500 rose 22% for the year - shorts had a bad year overall. S3 estimates overall short losses reached $194.8 billion. But the losses by those shorting Tesla were particularly bad – more than the losses they suffered at Microsoft and Faceboook owner Meta, combined. And Tesla, which is worth far more than any other automaker in the world – despite having sales that are a fraction of many established automakers – has long been a top target for shorts who believe the shares are overvauled. Last year, investors had an average short interest of $18.9 billion on Tesla shares, surpassed only by Apple, which has an average of $19 billion in short interest with a much larger market value than Tesla. To put the $12.2 billion in losses in context, the 6-plus week strike by the United Auto Workers union against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis cost the US economy as a whole a total of just over $10 billion, according to an estimate from Anderson Consulting Group, a Michigan think tank that tracks the cost of strikes. The losses by short sellers are a stark contrast to a year ago, when shorts made a $15.9 billion profit on Tesla shares as the company’s stock lost 65% of the value. But Tesla shares have been going up far more often then down since it went public in 2010. Since its shares started trading publicly, shorts have suffered a net loss of $61.8 billion, according to S3.