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Elon Musk teases Tesla (TSLA) shorts who lost an estimated $5 billion since the beginning of the year

Tesla’s stock (TSLA) keeps rising and it is not only pushing the value of the company higher, but also the value of the market’s bet against the company to over $10 billion.

Those shorts betting against the company have lost an estimated $5.1 billion year-to-date following Tesla’s 70% stock price increase during the period.

Famed investor David Einhorn admitted to holding a short position on Tesla earlier this year and that he was “feeling the pain.”

Though Einhorn seemed to be convinced that Tesla is a bubble that will eventually burst.

At the time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased the shorts – saying “stormy weather in Shortville”, but the stock as since increased by another 25%.

Now Musk is again teasing those betting against him and Tesla:

Unlike most CEOs, Musk has never been shy about taunting short sellers.

Back in 2012, Musk commented on the short interest on Tesla’s stock, he warned that anyone holding a stock position against the company will have a “tsunami of hurt” coming for them. During the 12 following months, Tesla’s stock price increased by 461% – much of which was attributed to a short squeeze after Tesla reported its first quarterly profit in Q1 2013.

Yesterday, short interest expert Ihor Dusaniwsky estimated that the total value of the market’s bet against Tesla rose to $10.4 billion – or about a sixth of the company’s total market cap.

The increase is linked to the increased value of the stock since the total number of shorted shares has decreased last month as some short sellers apparently gave up.

Musk believes that others who are still betting against Tesla are resorting to desperate tactics to influence the company:

The fact that Tesla has been able to consistently increase its stock price is quite important not only to investors, but also to anyone invested in Tesla’s mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy since they have been using the public market to raise more money in order to accelerate their production plans and finance large projects, like the Gigafactory in Nevada for example.

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

Fred is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at Electrek.

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