2017 Investor Roundtable: TSLA Market Action

[luvb2b]

shortvolume.com says shorts leaned more heavily on tesla yesterday than any time in the last month (on a relative basis, meaning percent of shares sold short vs. sold outright). it was a 0.648 ratio, meaning almost 2 shares were sold short for every 1 sold by a real seller. the volume to the downside was unusual yesterday but other than that volume has been fairly light past few days.

i wonder how many of these shorts are willing to gamble through earnings. the volume has been drying up and i'm not sure they will find an exit for that much volume below 300 ahead of the may 3 earnings.

 

[CraigVG]

What is going on? Outside the Bollinger Bands...

 

[vgrinshpun]

520k shares borrowed in pre-market being dumped...

 

[Navin]

Look for markets to pull tesla down to 300 or just under it today - small chance of a bigger slide. At any rate - will be buying at close today.

 

[vgrinshpun]

shortvolume.com says shorts leaned more heavily on tesla yesterday than any time in the last month (on a relative basis, meaning percent of shares sold short vs. sold outright). it was a 0.648 ratio, meaning almost 2 shares were sold short for every 1 sold by a real seller. the volume to the downside was unusual yesterday but other than that volume has been fairly light past few days.

i wonder how many of these shorts are willing to gamble through earnings. the volume has been drying up and i'm not sure they will find an exit for that much volume below 300 ahead of the may 3 earnings.
View attachment 223822

Do you think short volume correlate with quantity of shares (net) shorted for a given day?

 

[luvb2b]

i don't know what you mean, are you referring to the net shorted values that you calculate from fidelity?
if so, i haven't followed your calculations to know. however you could take your estimates and track against the reported number of short sales and see how they track.

Do you think short volume correlate with quantity of shares (net) shorted for a given day?

 

[luvb2b]

this action is as i was expecting - it took 40-50k volume bursts to knowck it down. and on the way up it's only taking 15-25k to move the price easily higher. i think a couple more points to get yesterday's shorts underwater sets up either a late day or early next week move. perhaps on the launch of solar roof orders?

anyone remember the old roach motel commercials? shorts check in but they can't check out!

shortvolume.com says shorts leaned more heavily on tesla yesterday than any time in the last month (on a relative basis, meaning percent of shares sold short vs. sold outright). it was a 0.648 ratio, meaning almost 2 shares were sold short for every 1 sold by a real seller. the volume to the downside was unusual yesterday but other than that volume has been fairly light past few days.

i wonder how many of these shorts are willing to gamble through earnings. the volume has been drying up and i'm not sure they will find an exit for that much volume below 300 ahead of the may 3 earnings.
View attachment 223822

 

[dalalsid]

Thank you! Do you have a useful link for deriving that graph, since option open interest on many of the contracts changes dynamically, often daily particularly for the nearer term strikes?

Shouldn't there be an indication of dis-continuity between the '18 and ' 19 LEAPS?

http://demo.chartiq.com/widgets/2.0/widget.html?widget=optionpain

 

[racer26]

this action is as i was expecting - it took 40-50k volume bursts to knowck it down. and on the way up it's only taking 15-25k to move the price easily higher. i think a couple more points to get yesterday's shorts underwater sets up either a late day or early next week move. perhaps on the launch of solar roof orders?

If I were a short, I'd be getting awfully nervous that the half million shares shorted this morning didn't successfully move the needle very far, and was unable to keep it there.

We already know that some time in the next 9 days we expect to hear solar roof news, and then get followed up with May 3's ER which should also be decent. Yesterday's news is likely the best opportunity to get out of the way for them in the next few weeks.

 

[luvb2b]

yep. i track intraday the volume that tesla has traded relative to the last month or two. for example today you see cvx and xom trading 1.5x daily volume pace. tesla routinely has been trading 0.6-0.8x daily volume pace, often amongst the lowest of large caps that i track. that means to me there simply is not enough volume to let people get out of uncomfortable shorts at current levels.

If I were a short, I'd be getting awfully nervous that the half million shares shorted this morning didn't successfully move the needle very far, and was unable to keep it there.

We already know that some time in the next 9 days we expect to hear solar roof news, and then get followed up with May 3's ER which should also be decent. Yesterday's news is likely the best opportunity to get out of the way for them in the next few weeks.

 

[vgrinshpun]

i don't know what you mean, are you referring to the net shorted values that you calculate from fidelity?
if so, i haven't followed your calculations to know. however you could take your estimates and track against the reported number of short sales and see how they track.

I was referring to short interest reported by Nasdaq. This, after all is a "master set" of data. Any other data, imo, are related to this "master set" with varying degree of accuracy.

I was going to try to do analysis of my data collected by doing random snap shots of the Fidelity trading screen against the "master set" for a while, but every weekend I somehow come with excuse for not spending time to do it (taxes being the one I used last weekend).

What I was getting at, is that we can conceivably see a lot of shorting volume on a given day, but the day could end up as a net zero day in terms of shorting. To analyze shorting fully, it seems, one ideally would need to know both daily shorting volume and daily changes in short interest.

 

[austinEV]

@vgrinshpun are those shortable shares gone? Interesting we are up with a record amount of shares available.

 

[brian45011]

http://demo.chartiq.com/widgets/2.0/widget.html?widget=optionpain

Thank you!

 

[vgrinshpun]

@vgrinshpun are those shortable shares gone? Interesting we are up with a record amount of shares available.

There were about 520K borrowed in pre-market, but only 32k additional after the open, so not too many additional takers... They must be scared.

 

[Starno]

So we're only 12 days away from Q1 earning reports.
Next 2 weeks are going to be very interesting.

And 7 trading day away from it.

 

[luvb2b]

there's 5,559 calls of open interest at the 305 strike vs. only 2,829 puts. i think if they come through the 305 strike you may have as much as 300k shares of hedge related flow around the options. on a low volume day like today, that could be quite interesting indeed.

If I were a short, I'd be getting awfully nervous that the half million shares shorted this morning didn't successfully move the needle very far, and was unable to keep it there.

We already know that some time in the next 9 days we expect to hear solar roof news, and then get followed up with May 3's ER which should also be decent. Yesterday's news is likely the best opportunity to get out of the way for them in the next few weeks.

 

[Tslynk67]

520k shares borrowed in pre-market being dumped...

Not working terribly well...

 

[Richgoogol]

i think we can close above 305 today

 

[ValueAnalyst]

As I noted previously, TSLA is somewhat decoupling from trends in oil prices and energy stocks. I believe this is due to Tesla's ongoing disruption of the energy sector - i.e. making oil obsolete, so no need for further oil E&P etc while Tesla Energy products replace it. Although there will always be some correlation between TSLA and oil prices, I would expect it to decline going forward, and the decoupling to accelerate in the next several years.

OPEC has an upcoming meeting in which they will decide to extend production cuts or not. If they do extend, I expect a rise in oil prices in 2Q17/2H17, and this could positively affect TSLA. If they don't extend, oil prices would likely take a hit, and TSLA may sell-off in the near term. Given how undervalued I think the stock is, I will hold TSLA in either case, even through a potential short squeeze.

I don't know anyone's specific financial situation, so none of this is advice. Just informative.

 

[luvb2b]

and here's the breach of 305 - note dyay volume is around 2m at present, and probably at least another 200k shares need to get added to take care of options hedging around that level. should be quite interesting the rest of the day because volume is so anemic.

there's 5,559 calls of open interest at the 305 strike vs. only 2,829 puts. i think if they come through the 305 strike you may have as much as 300k shares of hedge related flow around the options. on a low volume day like today, that could be quite interesting indeed.