Papafox's Daily TSLA Trading Charts

[Papafox]

The two factors most influencing TSLA's slide today were a NASDAQ dip of 1.46% and shorts being responsible for 63% of TSLA selling today. TSLA news today was again stale. For the past several days short-sellers (most likely hedge funds) have been doing a full-court press of TSLA, keeping it from retaining gains above 244 and looking for any weakness. That weakness arrived today in the form of macro weakness, owing to harsh (though true) words Trump spoke about trade with China and the need for significant change in agreements.

The NASDAQ began the day in the green but closed down 1.46% after some Trump remarks at the U.N. The Dow was less affected, and closed down only 0.53%. Tech stocks I follow were down between 1.3% and 3.4%.

What's odd about the beginning of the TSLA dip today was how linear it was. Not until bulls exerted a little resistance at 10:45am did the pace lessen momentarily before resuming. Notice that TSLA started down before the NASDAQ dip, suggesting that today was a pre-scheduled bear attack. As the NASDAQ sunk further, the opportunity for maximizing the dip increased and with shorts doing 63% of the selling on a higher volume day, the effort the manipulators put in must have been significant. Volume exceeded 12 million shares because once TSLA starts a big and unexpected fall, there are investors who don't understand the reason for the fall but want to get on the sidelines to see how deep it goes.

Notice the NASDAQ climb after 2pm in which the index reclaimed about a third of its daily losses before hitting more turbulence. Now look at the same time period for TSLA and you can see the recovery is nowhere near as large as the NASDAQ's. That's how the game is played: accelerate dips with short-selling and dampen the climbs with short-selling, then slowly cover.

One of the easiest mistakes to make on such a day is to be too quick on the draw and buy too soon on a false bottom, only to see the stock price sink further. I have held off redeploying some assets yet because I want to see what the media cooks up to explain the dip, and I also want to see a reversal before investing more.

Looking at the opricot.com max pain chart for Friday, you can see that below 240, there really aren't significant numbers of calls sold. These are typically the target of hedge funds. On the other hand, there's a spike in 230 puts at the moment, and perhaps we have some of the put buyers joining the hedge funds on this push lower. As for typical market makers, the actual max pain looks about 242.50. That number will change by Friday, but the bottom line is that traditional market makers will be delta-hedging to stay fairly neutral and that delta-hedging puts downward pressure on the stock price. This is one of the reasons why patience in waiting for a turnaround when the dip is so severe is generally a good idea.

Short-sellers were tagged with 63% of TSLA trading today

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that today's dip satisfied the goal of the short-seller manipulators, which was to put TSLA back into the dip on steroids, slow climb, then another deep dip pattern we saw throughout August. Ultimately, it's a way to prevent TSLA from running higher if enough resources are thrown at it and no large buyer jumps in. Significant news will change the pattern but as long as low volume and uncertainty dominates, this is what can most likely be expected in the short term.

Conditions:
* Dow down 142 (0.53%)
* NASDAQ down 119 (1.46%)
* TSLA 223.21, down 18.02 (7.47%)
* TSLA volume 12.7M shares
* Oil 56.90
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 63%

 

[Sancho]

The way I saw today unfold, the bears latched onto the Nio negative news today to attack TSLA at market open. (Of course the fall of Nio is actually a sign of Tesla strength, but what does rationality have to do with bear raids?).

Then the bears got a break by NASDAQ falling soon after, which accelerated the TSLA bear raid.

Then, as you indicate, the weak longs think the sky is falling, and it’s a bad day, secured.

The bottom line hasn’t changed: until more big money believes in the Tesla story, the manipulators can have lots more days like this. Let’s hope the delivery report next week starts to turn the tide. If not that, something else will, because TSLA is increasingly undervalued.

 

[Papafox]

Today was a good day for TSLA, which found a bottom and then soared into the close. Although there was some loose correlation between the NASDAQ's morning dip and TSLA's it would be erroneous to believe that the TSLA dip was caused by the NASDAQ dip. If you look at percentages, the NASDAQ bottomed out about .5% below opening while TSLA bottomed out about 2.5% below opening. That's a 5X increase in TSLA's volatility, which makes no sense as a cause-effect relationship. Rather I continue to believe we are seeing camouflage effects where the short-selling coincides with the macro dip to lessen the understanding that the dip was, in fact, a manipulation.

Notice the deep "icicle" dips followed by near recoveries? We're back to more typical short-selling manipulation artifacts now. Add in 63% of the selling today was tagged to shorts, and the picture becomes clearer.

TSLA really diverged from the NASDAQ's trajectory for most of the day once both entities entered the green again. Despite the slowly rising NASDAQ, we saw strong efforts throughout the day to push TSLA down.

If you bought below 220 today, my congrats. You were brave and lucky. In my mind, the point at which we knew that the shorts had really lost control wasn't the 11am run to nearly 228. Rather, it was at 2:12pm when the pushdown that the shorts were engineering was overriden by a sufficient number of buyers saying, "This is bullsugar, I'm buying!" We've seen too many instances in the past week or two when heavy shorting would take a nice gain in the afternoon down into the red through relentless selling. I strongly suspect that the manipulators had such a plan in mind today, but when TSLA gained its second wind after 2pm and climbed into the close it was clear that the shorts had been overridden by the bulls.

I'm starting to believe that who (bears vs bulls) controls TSLA's pricing in the low volume afternoons controls the trajectory of the stock. We need to see more of these rises into close. They are the antidote for the manipulations we've been subjected to.

Was today's gains inevitable? Nope. If macros had been poor today I suspect shorts would have succeeded in a closing with TSLA lower than yesterday. The good news of today? With the strong climb into close, the manipulators lost money today. If they lose money too many days in a row, then they will back off and lick their wounds. Let's see what tomorrow holds for us. Bulls have more confidence after today, but the manipulators have been extremely active and may not be ready to throw in the towel quite yet. I think the percent of selling by shorts number will help give us a clue when the manipulators are backing down.

The NASDAQ dipped about half a percent in the morning and then climbed steadily to close for a gain of 1.05%

Regarding the @Sancho comment about Nio, I think those news stories contributed to the dip yesterday, but again, it was more an excuse for a dip on steroids than a true bad news item that would cause the dip. On the other hand, when I looked at my stock app last night virtually every news story was some variation on the theme that China's Tesla had crashed. The media certainly is no friend to our stock at the moment.

TSLA shorts were tagged with 63% of TSLA selling today, same as yesterday Chart by volumebot.com

As you can see from Dusaniwsky's chart, there was no big change in short interest with the big dip yesterday, but percent of selling by shorts remained very high at 63%. The takeaway is that high percentage of selling by shorts does not mean that short interest is also rising.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that the bollinger bands are currently squeezing in. The lower is rising and is at 214 now, and the upper is dipping at 254. The mid bb is near 234 now, so let's hope that TSLA gets above that number so that we can start raising the upper bb in case next week's P&D report surprises on the high side.

Conditions:
* Dow up 163 (0.61%)
* NASDAQ up 84 (1.05%)
* TSLA 228.70, up 5.49 (2.46%)
* TSLA volume 9.3M shares
* Oil 56.65
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 63%

 

[McMountain]

Fearfully I enter the thread of the mighty Papafox with a small comment:

It is not necessary for the SP to rise above the mid BB to cause the mid BB to rise (and the upper and lower BBs with it, given constant volatility). What is important is what kind of prices drop out of the period of trading days (30?) that make up the average. If we look at the technical chart in Papa´s post, we see that a couple of 210/220 days will drop out, so the mid BB should rise as long as prices in the upper 220s and - hopefully - 230s/240s enter from the "right side" of the diagram.

 

[Papafox]

Check out the volume indicators at the bottom of the daily chart. When electrek.co published info on the leaked email from Elon today, the stock price took off and along with it came a surge in volume. In the email, Elon said that 100K deliveries is possible in Q3 and that Q3 demand is tracking toward 110K. Both these statements are bullish and the SP responded accordingly. Additional good news was this story by CNBC which says that insurance data in China shows that Tesla may be delivering 175% of last quarter's numbers this quarter.

Other bullish news today:
* China Renaissance Initiates Coverage on Tesla with Buy Rating, $324 Price Target It's important to have a Chinese analyst following TSLA because they understand the nuances of doing business in the country.
* V10 rollout about to begin, which might mean that some substantial revenue from smart summon should be able to be recognized in Q3. Not all of us agree on the timetable for revenue recognition, however.
* Completed Model 3 body in white cars are claimed to be seen at GF3. Also, an October 14 time frame is rumored to be the beginning of M3 mass production at GF3 according to word of a Tesla glass contractor mentioned in a tweet by Vincent.

Remember that a day that closes significantly up in the afternoon is a day when the manipulators get toasted over the coals. It happened yesterday and it happened again today, in a much bigger fashion. Whoever was manipulating TSLA and caught with too many shares sold short when the electrek news broke lost many millions. Couldn't happen to a more deserving band of pirates. Looking at the closing minute and after-hours trading, you can see 223K shares traded in the final minute of market trading, plus 19K, 108K, and 23K of pre-arranged trades in after-hours. I strongly suspect these trades include substantial efforts to cover short positions picked up during the day.

Let me point out that prior to the electrek story breaking today, the shorts were playing a long, hard game of whack the mole, in an attempt to get TSLA to close back in the red today.

Today's news goes a long way to explain what's been happening during the past week. The China insurance news and some reliable info on Q3 deliveries from Elon suggests that some Wall Street types with access to such information realized that TSLA would be heading higher. Rather than simply buy and bid the price of the stock up, we see instead a giant head fake to push weak longs out of the stock while depressing the price, which would allow these Wall Street pirates to enter their positions at great discounts. Electrek letting the cat out of the bag early really screwed things up for the manipulators, which is fine by me. Let's see if the financial pain from the past two days affects the manipulators' willingness to continue playing this game. Also, when volume rises as real news becomes known, it's really hard to successfully play the manipulation game. We'll know that the playing field has changed when we see a substantial dip in the percentage of selling tagged to TSLA shorts.

I noticed that @luvb2b updated his spreadsheet estimates for Q3, which now show a small non-gaap profit for the quarter. If Tesla delivers at least 100K vehicles in Q3, they should hit minimum guidance of 360,000 for 2019. If TSLA shows a small gaap profit in Q3, expect the Q3 ER to be decent, rather than a big disappointment like Q2's ER.

Most of us have ridden in this rodeo for many seasons now. If you managed to keep from getting bucked off during this latest head fake, congratulations. Overall, I think the market hasn't yet priced all the positive news from today into the SP yet.

The NASDAQ closed down 0.58% and had very little to do with TSLA's overall trajectory today.

The manipulators were caught heavily engaged in their short-selling process when the SP ran up today, trapping them with losses. Shorts were tagged with 63.5% of TSLA selling today, according to volumebot.com

Looking at the tech chart, please note that TSLA closed today above the Tuesday price from which the big descent took place. Thus, it took only 2 days to reverse this enormous dip. Meanwhile the upper bb is at 253.92 and should be rising soon, which is important in case the P&D report removes some of the fears that have been holding TSLA back this year.

Conditions:
* Dow down 80 (0.30%)
* NASDAQ down 47 (0.58%)
* TSLA 242.56, up 13.86 (6.06%)
* TSLA volume 11.7M shares
* Oil 56.41
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 63.5%

 

[Papafox]

A couple of thoughts from today.

Notice how TSLA didn't immediately jump to 242. Sometimes when bad news come the bots will do an immediate plunge in the flash of an eye, but good news with Tesla might take a bit longer to interpret. Normally I have price alerts sent to message my phone when there's a big move, and I could have benefited from such a setup today. Food for thought. I still did buy a couple leaps on the way up, but earlier would definitely have been better.

Secondly, the severity of the dip on Tuesday and the high percentage of selling by shorts leading up to Tuesday indicates that this simply wasn't the usual dip engineered by hedge funds to protect some expiring call options on Friday. The big Wall Street boys got involved. Now the next question is: If they intended to knock the stock price down and then get in, are they still interested in getting in at the current price? We'll find out soon enough.

 

[Papafox]

The games aren't over yet. With 64% of selling tagged to TSLA short-sellers on Friday, the big dog manipulators haven't given up. Nonetheless, with the NASDAQ closed down over 1% on Friday and near record levels of selling by shorts, TSLA still managed to close near neutral for the day. Just imagine what would have been possible without the macro dip and the substantial manipulations?

Looking at the daily chart above, you can see high volumes in the morning as cerrtain parties worked to keep TSLA from running higher on an options expiration Friday. At 9:33am, fully 116,000 shares traded in a single minute. Looking at the spikes during the morning trading, you can see that when TSLA starts heading higher at a steep angle, buying intensifies because there are traders out there who don't want to miss a big TSLA rise. These quick runs upward are what I think the short selling is so often targeting. When 116K shares were being bought that one minute, an equal number were sold, and I strongly suspect that you had hedge funds shorting the rises until they cooled then covering their positions over a wider period of time to prepare for the next defensive move.

Alas, at about 11:45am Trump made a statement about how the U.S. might work to reduce U.S. investments in China, and both TSLA and the broader markets dipped. What's interesting is to see the extent of the icicle dips that happened in the afternoon. TSLA kept trying to recover back into the green and selling bursts kept pushing the stock down again. Ultimately, the day turned into an extended game of whack-the-mole as TSLA wanted to go higher someone was determined to prevent that from happening.

The 11:45am news that led to a NASDAQ dip for the day was a bit of a gift to the shorts. The manipulators made money on shares shorted before the 11:45am dip but covered after the dip. Nonetheless, with TSLA rising into the close, it wasn't likely a good overall day for the manipulators, either.

The NASDAQ dipped 1.13% on Friday

To understand what incentives market makers would have to influence Friday afternoon trading, take a look at the top chart of the opricot max-pain charts. Puts and calls are almost even at 240, with puts being most prevalent to the left and calls most prevalent to the right. A close at 242.14 suited the needs of the market makers. Manipulating hedge funds would have preferred a lower close, but they lacked the ability to pull it off.

Short percentage of selling increased to 64% today as the manipulations continue

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that the upper bollinger band is at about 254 now, and there's a good chance of continued upward pressure as expectations for a positive P&D report have changed since Elon's leaked email. Monday morning often has some buying exuberance, and I suspect the manipulators will try to tamp it down but may not make much progress until afternoon. Since Sept 30 is Monday, expect the P&D report to be out a few days after that.

Conditions:
* Dow down 71 (0.26%)
* NASDAQ down 91 (1.13%)
* TSLA 242.13, down 0.43 (0.18%)
* TSLA volume 11.1M shares
* Oil 55.91
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 64%

 

[Papafox]

Monday's TSLA trading
Note: Since our favorite NASDAQ TSLA chart got gorked today on the NASDAQ end, we're using a substitute TSLA daily chart instead from my phone.

Monday's NASDAQ trading. The NASDAQ closed up 0.75%.

Today's exuberant trading on the broader indexes was a threat to the entities that have been manipulating TSLA so hard as we approach the P&D report. With volume low again today, it was a setup for manipulations and the best defense is a good offence, so as the NASDAQ continued to climb, we saw a big dip that bottomed out around 12:20pm and then recovered through about 3pm. Nonetheless, TSLA lost a small amount rather than climbing with the NASDAQ.

The biggest story today was this article in Electrek that suggested Fred had a contact in Tesla who thought the company was still "a few thousand" vehicles short of 100,000 deliveries with one day left. The article speculated that there were not a few thousand Teslas at U.S. delivery centers and therefore concluded Tesla would not hit 100,000 deliveries. The article made no mention of European delivery centers, which might be brimming with activity. We'll have to see.

The late morning dip may have had some influence from the Electrek story, but it gave all the appearances of being a manipulation effort primarily, especially with the macros green and still rising. For this reason I bought 100 shares for trading near the bottom of the dip.

Big selling bursts plus 310,000 shares traded in the final minute confirmed that shenanigans were afoot today.

Most likely we see the P&D report on Wednesday, but it is not impossible that it could come out on Tuesday. My guess is that the manipulators will try to spin the results as negative by selling, but if the results are good enough and buying picks up, the volume will overpower the manipulations. It's going to be interesting, to say the least.

Percent of selling tagged to the shorts was once again very high at 60%

Conditions:
* Dow up 97 (0.36%)
* NASDAQ up 60 (0.75%)
* TSLA 240.87, down 1.26 (0.52%)
* TSLA volume 5.7M shares
* Oil 54.56
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 60%

 

[Papafox]

Today was generally considered the last sure opportunity to add to TSLA before the P&D report. Despite both the Dow and NASDAQ being down over 1%, TSLA closed up by nearly $4. The morning trading was rocky as manipulators played a game of whack-the-mole every time TSLA ventured into the green (classic manipulations). In the afternoon, though, TSLA rallied, approached 246 at one time and closed above 244. The buying pressure clearly exceeded the ability of the manipulators to hold the SP back.

Trading in the final minute at 4:00pm was a mere 83K shares, a reflection of the fact that short manipulations from this morning had most likely already been reluctantly closed prior to the end of market trading. The manipulators lost money today as TSLA ran high in the afternoon and stayed there.

The NASDAQ closed down 1.13% today, but bulls looking for a last chance entry into TSLA before the P&D report led to buying pressure in the afternoon

In news, This Inside EV report on U.S. Tesla sales in September came in somewhat low but this Teslarati article that quotes a Piper Jaffray analyst was much more bullish on Q3 deliveries. We also learn in this CNBC story that Tesla is buying computer vision company DeepScale.

Today TSLA significantly outperformed the broader indexes. Going into the P&D Report at 244 is not a high price point, and with the upper bollinger band at 254.43 today, there's room for a nice rise should the numbers be good. Before market open tomorrow would be a good guess for when the numbers come out.

Percent of selling by TSLA shorts dipped for the second day in a row, down to 53%

Taking a broader look at the past couple of months, you can see that there's been a real (and artificial) effort to keep TSLA below 245 as it heads into the P&D report. Keep an eye on the percentage of selling by shorts number. If it continues to dip, it's a bullish sign because the manipulators are backing off. I have little doubt that TSLA can break through this 244-245 barrier and explore higher prices if the P&D report is good. Fingers crossed!

Conditions:
* Dow down 344 (1.28%)
* NASDAQ down 91 (1.13%)
* TSLA 244.69, up 3.82 (1.59%)
* TSLA volume 6.0M shares
* Oil 54.14
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 53%

 

[Papafox]

Today the Tesla Q3 P&D report came out. Unfortunately, it missed Elon's goal of 100K deliveries. Nonetheless, it was a reasonable report that indicates 97K deliveries and 96,155 vehicles produced. It was close to the FactSet average of 98K and well above earlier FactSet averages of about 92K. If you realize that at the end of the quarter deliveries can be as high as 3K/day, the miss was about one day of deliveries.

Worries that S&X would be particularly low in deliveries, maybe something like 14K turned out to be incorrect, with a reasonable 17,650 S&X deliveries in Q3.

Looking at the day's trading closing at 4pm, the macros were way down at 1.86% loss for the Dow and 1.56% loss for the NASDAQ, but TSLA managed to eek by on a mere 0.64% loss. Percent of selling by shorts was quite high at 56%, and so the lack of a TSLA dip to exceed the macro dip was despite the significant efforts of the manipulators to push TSLA lower today. I attribute the resilience to longs who didn't want to sell before the P&D report.

How the media spins the story depends upon the friend or foe factor. Friendly sources are speaking of record deliveries (true) and more hostile, more sensation-seeking sources are talking about a miss.

The NASDAQ dipped 1.56% today with the Dow down even more

Looking at longer-term implications of the 3Q P&D report, there's much to appreciate. Production grew 10% this quarter compared with last quarter, and production is the primary factor holding deliveries back. Amazingly, Tesla for the 2nd quarter in a row managed to deliver more vehicles than it produced in the quarter, thus slimming inventory down even more and potentially helping cash flow. If you consider that Tesla is growing production at a rate of 10% per quarter, that's a 40% per year rate of growth, excluding China's GF3. The 3Q ER, which could take place as early as this month, should also be an improvement from Q2's, due to maintaining the same approx. Average Sale Price of Model 3 while no doubt cutting average cost per vehicle, due to economies of scale and ongoing efficiency efforts. The latest calculations by @luvb2b are that Tesla will be getting very close to non-gaap break-even this quarter, certainly better than Q2.

Do I expect the manipulations to continue for a while? Of course. The parties involved will want to make a big deal about Tesla missing the 100K goal, even though that number was just mentioned last week. In after-hours trading TSLA finished at about 232. Don't be surprised to see a MMD tomorrow, particularly if the macros are still in the red zone. In time this too shall pass but snug up the seatbelt for the next couple of days.

Shorts were tagged with a mighty 56% of TSLA selling today, up from yesterday

Conditions:
* Dow down 494 (1.86%)
* NASDAQ down 123 (1.56%)
* TSLA 243.13, down 1.56 (0.64%)
* TSLA volume 6.3M shares
* Oil 52.80
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 56%

 

[Papafox]

To no one's great surprise, the usual suspects manipulated the "sugar" out of TSLA today, despite volume reaching nearly 15 million shares. Fully two-thirds, 67%, of TSLA ticker transactions were tagged as "short" today.

How did those manipulations manifest themselves? Check out the 10am dip in which TSLA dipped below 225, which required a good deal of selling to get the dip on steroids to reach that low. The goal, of course, was to pull off another dip like last week's in which stop-loss trigger after stop-loss trigger were activated and the free-fall became so intense that most buyers stood on the sidelines and watched, waiting for the dust to settle. By 11am the NASDAQ had recovered to the green and the pre-dip level but look at TSLA. It only regained about half the dip because of the push going down and the defensive selling as it climbed back up.

You can see throughout the day that the short-sellers tried to rekindle the flames through various dips that created small icicles, but the market realized that given the relative good news of the P&D Report and the shaky reason for the dip, (Tesla fell short of Elon's 100K hope and the FactSet 98K number, both products of only the last week of speculation). The shorts wanted to emphasize "miss" but even with two-thirds of the selling on a high volume day, they couldn't pull it off. Thankfully, the NASDAQ's climb today really helped with TSLA's recovery.

The good news? The shorts sold like mad-men in the morning. As they covered today, they covered for losses because the stock price rose throughout the day.

The NASDAQ experienced a 10am dip but still managed to close up 1.12%

The heavy manipulations today were done because of ambiguity over the Q3 P&D Report. For this same reason, the main TMC Investor's thread was haunted with a large number of trolls today, and CNBC and other media outlets did their best to paint Tesla as a bad investment choice.

In particular, the appearance of JMP Securities analyst Joseph Osha on CNBC illustrates the point. I don't think that Osha meant to create FUD, I think he just used incompetent logic to reach a negative conclusion that CNBC was more than willing to share with their audience. Osha said that since Tesla delivered 95,300 in Q2 and only 97,000 in Q3, that's not a very big increase and such a small Q over Q increase suggests they could have made more vehicles but didn't because of demand issues. What Osha doesn't realize is that Q2's deliveries were only possible with a large carry-in of inventory from Q1 and that Tesla's production growth was about 10% in Q3, about as much as was possible, and yet even with small inventory at end of Q2 Tesla somehow managed to deliver more M3s in Q3 than they made. It's nuts to say more cars weren't sold because of a demand problem. S & X deliveries were near even with Q2 while Model 3 sold like hotcakes.

Looking at Opricot's max pain top chart, you can see that a market-maker would be happy to see TSLA heading towards 245 by Friday, because that's the point where puts predominate to the left and calls predominate to the right. Hedge funds which sold the calls but didn't delta-hedge would be really trying to keep TSLA below 340, which has a serious number of calls, but would prefer a close below 225. These numbers will change a bit by Friday afternoon.

Shorts were tagged with a rarely-seen 67% of TSLA selling today, suggesting intense manipulations

Looking at the tech chart, you can see the dip bounced in the vicinity of the lower bb, and thus it is good to see that it had risen by time of the P&D Report to give some protection. Consider today's dip to be another push-down in the August and September

Chances are, Tesla's Q3 ER will show improved financial performance over Q2, and it would not be unusual to see some price recovery between now and the ER. The manipulations through excessive churning of short shares on a daily basis seeks to thwart that climb and keep TSLA in the same August and September pattern of big dips followed by slow recoveries.

Pressure from shorting will be on TSLA Friday, most likely, so let's hope the macros behave themselves.

Conditions:
* Dow up 122 (0.47%)
* NASDAQ up 87 (1.12%)
* TSLA 233.03, down 10.10 (4.15%)
* TSLA volume 14.9M shares
* Oil 52.27
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 67%

 

[Papafox]

TSLA lost 1.60 on Friday as a barrage of FUD confused investors during morning hours and significant capping efforts slowed TSLA's recovery.

The NASDAQ rose a robust 1.40% on Friday. Some middle of the road economic data puts pressure on the Feds to lower the interest rate once again, which is what the market likes. Nonetheless, unemployment in the U.S. fell to a 50 year low.

After the inevitable pushdown upon opening (MMD), TSLA rose into the green to follow the macros. Around 10am, this PDF file surfaced, which is an acknowledgement from the NHTSA that they're going to look at the petition from an attorney representing a number of Tesla owners who were affected by a OTA software update that reduced their vehicles' ranges somewhat in order to preserve the integrity of the batteries for longevity (and of course for safety reasons as well). Lora Kolodny of CNBC as well as other "journalists" picked up on the story, and the CNBC story stretched the truth with the title Tesla under investigation on claim it throttled batteries to hide fire risk. There's much that's inaccurate with this inflammatory title.

Looking at the rest of the day's trading, you can see it resembles a series of plateaus. They typically ran horizontal below a whole number such as 230, 231, or 232 to prevent the stock price from reaching that next number. Alas, with the positive macros, TSLA spent most of the day slowly battling the capping efforts of the manipulators. No wonder TSLA shorts were tagged with 62.5% of selling on Friday. The good news? Once TSLA bottomed out around 10:30am, it was uphill from there, and all the efforts of manipulations by shorting were (for the most part) unprofitable.

As I looked at my Yahoo app, it was loaded from top to bottom with FUD. Here's another one from CNBC, where Mark Tepper (some TMC members believe he is short TSLA) claims "There's absolutely no reason to own Tesla in the near term." There's little new that he has to say as he mostly recites the stale "competition is coming" warning. Tepper brought up that TSLA had been previously trading in a 250 to 380 range, but once in broke below 250 it has been unable to rise back above that number. If you look at the tech chart below you will see the reason why TSLA cannot penetrate 250: the shorts throw everything including the kitchen sink at TSLA when it is trading at 244 to prevent breaching 250.

Finally, this weekend we see a NYU professor claiming TSLA will lose 80% or disappear. His reasoning? Why of course it is Tesla is a small company and just doesn't stand a chance competing against the big automakers. Sigh. Maybe we ought to ask Jaguar how that ipace is doing or Chevy about recent Bolt sales.

The point that I'm trying to make is that Friday and this weekend were saturated with FUD. If you look at the big pushdowns in August and September, you'll see that they typically lasted for 2 days. Friday was day two and judging by the reluctance of TSLA to stay below 230 both these day, I'd say the dip may have played its course.

Shorts were tagged with a whopping 62.5% of selling on Friday

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that Thursday and Friday's dips fit well with the pattern of August and September two-day big dips followed by slow rises and then a rinse-repeat. Macro forces can of course influence this pattern for the good or bad, but so far we're remaining true to the pattern, and it is taking a TREMENDOUS quantity of shorting to keep TSLA within this pattern.

In previous years and months, the artifacts of short-selling were the very deep "icicles" and the telltale 20K, 30K, or 40K selling streaks within one minute that caused the stock price to move. The artifacts are not nearly as evident in the past two months (although capping certainly can be seen) and I think the reason is that the manipulators have been tuning their algorithms to be less obvious about the manipulations but still get the job done. Short percentage of selling numbers above 60% tells us clearly that the manipulations continue.

Looking at the tech chart, the lower and upper bollinger bands have succeeded in defeating large price excursions in the past two months and the lower bb currently sits at 226.

When does the pattern end? We'll likely see more ups and downs, but Tesla is on track, I believe, to deliver quite a different vision of its future come 2020. Think GF3 rolling out the Model 3s in Shanghai, Model Y coming up to speed in Fremont, with the Semi-truck, the pickup truck, and Roadster 2 in the wings. Let's not forget the hundreds of millions heading toward the bottom line in 2020 from the Fiat-Chrysler deal.

We've heard Elon elude to a battery production capability in the TerraWatt hours, and between the Maxwell acquisition and the newly-discovered Hibar Systems acquisition, there's massive change coming in the battery supply side of Tesla, which will further extend Tesla's lead over competitors. With Maxwell, Tesla has acquired better technology, and with Hibar Systems Tesla has secured the know-how and machinery for producing its own battery cells efficiently. Before Tesla can show investors and analysts what it is about to do on the battery side through its battery day in early 2020, it first needed to complete the acquisitions and have all the pieces in place. My guess is that the large expansion of vehicle types beyond Model Y manufactured by Tesla is waiting for this new battery chemistry and process to fall into place and for the massive increase in cell and battery production. Battery day should be amazing, which should help offset some of the usual seasonality of Q1, made worse by GF3 still in ramp-up mode.

Until Tesla lets the cat out of the bag and shows its cards, however, the stock feels the negative effects of analysts and media types reciting the stale old FUD of 2019. A better day lies ahead, but once again, we don't know exactly how far ahead, and thus it's best to keep your investments in stock or flexible enough in leaps to outlast the current malaise and enjoy what looks like it's going to be a robust 2020 once we get past the rocky Q1. As financials improve further into 2020, profitability should be possible while rapid growth continues, and the countdown will begin again for S&P 500 inclusion. Until then we have Q4 19, which should continue the 2019 trend of improving financial results by quarter.

For the week, TSLA closed at 231.43, down 10.70 from last week's 242.13. Hoping you had a great weekend.

Conditions:
* Dow up 373 (1.42%)
* NASDAQ up 110 (1.40%)
* TSLA 231.43, down 1.60 (0.69%)
* TSLA volume 8.0M shares
* Oil 52.81 (on 10/5)
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 62.5%

 

[Papafox]

Many of us believe that the post-P&D Report dip to 231 was an overreaction that was then exaggerated by near-historically high percentage of selling by shorts (manipulative high-frequency churning without changing short interest) on the downswing. Alas, the dip was indeed 2 days in duration and when it became clear today that TSLA was going to begin a recovery from the dip, longs who bailed during the dip plus traders taking advantage of the volatility jumped in. Volume was moderate a 8M shares and the NASDAQ, though up midday, descended after 2pm into close. By that time, TSLA's strength had become apparent for today and there was no sell-off as the macros dipped.

Important news was lacking today, but I think analysts and big investors have had time now to plug Q3 delivery numbers (and mix between S,X,&3) into their spreadsheets and deduce that the Q3 financials are going to be somewhat better than originally thought.

With TSLA climbing throughout the day and into the close, manipulators who shorted had little opportunity to cover for a profit, and so for the third day in a row the manipulators likely lost money with their TSLA manipulations.

The NASDAQ ended the day down 0.33%. The Dow finished with a similar loss.

TSLA shorts were tagged with 60% of selling today, still a very high number. What would be healthy to see now would be a dip in the percentage of selling by shorts, which would indicate they're getting tired of losing money on the manipulations. Expect the manipulations to pick up again near 244, though, as they work to prevent a climb higher.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see the lower bb keeps climbing, and so I think without strong negative news or strong negative macros the downside looks mild in the short term. It's presently at 227.38. Meanwhile, the upper bb stands at 252.69, which is high enough to allow TSLA to penetrate the critical 250 level.

The most likely scenario IMO, barring successful FUD and bad macros, would be a continued climb to the 244 price area, where trench warfare and hand-to-hand combat will resume as TSLA tries to climb out of this pattern and the manipulators work hard to keep TSLA in the pattern. A momentary climb to 250 would not be nearly as meaningful as a close at or above that number.

Conditions:
* Dow down 96 (0.36%)
* NASDAQ down 26 (0.33%)
* TSLA 237.72, up 6.29 (2.72%)
* TSLA volume 8.1M shares
* Oil 53.08
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 60%

 

[Off Shore]

View attachment 463661
Many of us believe that the post-P&D Report dip to 231 was an overreaction that was then exaggerated by near-historically high percentage of selling by shorts (manipulative high-frequency churning without changing short interest) on the downswing. Alas, the dip was indeed 2 days in duration and when it became clear today that TSLA was going to begin a recovery from the dip, longs who bailed during the dip plus traders taking advantage of the volatility jumped in. Volume was moderate a 8M shares and the NASDAQ, though up midday, descended after 2pm into close. By that time, TSLA's strength had become apparent for today and there was no sell-off as the macros dipped.

Important news was lacking today, but I think analysts and big investors have had time now to plug Q3 delivery numbers (and mix between S,X,&3) into their spreadsheets and deduce that the Q3 financials are going to be somewhat better than originally thought.

With TSLA climbing throughout the day and into the close, manipulators who shorted had little opportunity to cover for a profit, and so for the third day in a row the manipulators likely lost money with their TSLA manipulations.

View attachment 463664
The NASDAQ ended the day down 0.33%. The Dow finished with a similar loss.


View attachment 463662
TSLA shorts were tagged with 60% of selling today, still a very high number. What would be healthy to see now would be a dip in the percentage of selling by shorts, which would indicate they're getting tired of losing money on the manipulations. Expect the manipulations to pick up again near 244, though, as they work to prevent a climb higher.


View attachment 463665
Looking at the tech chart, you can see the lower bb keeps climbing, and so I think without strong negative news or strong negative macros the downside looks mild in the short term. It's presently at 227.38. Meanwhile, the upper bb stands at 252.69, which is high enough to allow TSLA to penetrate the critical 250 level.

The most likely scenario IMO, barring successful FUD and bad macros, would be a continued climb to the 244 price area, where trench warfare and hand-to-hand combat will resume as TSLA tries to climb out of this pattern and the manipulators work hard to keep TSLA in the pattern. A momentary climb to 250 would not be nearly as meaningful as a close at or above that number.

Conditions:
* Dow down 96 (0.36%)
* NASDAQ down 26 (0.33%)
* TSLA 237.72, up 6.29 (2.72%)
* TSLA volume 8.1M shares
* Oil 53.08
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 60%

Impeccable analysis as always, but there are some of us who believe today's rise was principally on news of upcoming availability of fart and goat sounds for the low-speed speaker.

 

[Papafox]

As with most of you, I didn't expect TSLA to outperform the broader markets so strongly going into early afternoon. Volume remained high at 8.7M shares, which made the job of the manipulators more difficult on a day with positive Tesla sentiment. Through about noon the manipulators played a game of whack-the-mole with TSLA, but as volume increased leading into the noon hour, they could not hold TSLA down any more, and it soared to almost 244. Approaching 3pm, the NASDAQ started falling quickly, and this gave you-know-who the chance needed. At 2:57pm, 17K shares were sold in one minute to get the rock rolling downhill. It initially bounced back, but with the macros clearly falling going into close (see NASDAQ chart below), volume was light enough and macros crummy enough for the manipulators to eat away at more than half of the day's gains.

Even with the last hour's selloff, TSLA outperformed the NASDAQ today by more than 2.6%.

What has caused the noticeable increase in volume and buying pressure? Looking beyond @Off Shore 's suggestion, I would guess something having to do with China. The official opening of GF3 in Shanghai is coming this month, and some Chinese investors may be placing their bets before that event. Also, NIO surprised investors with better than expected 3Q deliveries today, and TSLA has twice now showed significant movements in the same direction as NIO's stock on big days (good and bad). Here's hoping macros run even tomorrow and give us a chance to see if TSLA will resume its climb.

The NASDAQ traded lower all day and then fell off quickly after 3pm for a 1.67% loss

The opricot chart for expiration on Friday shows lots of 237.50 and 240 calls, so expect the hedge funds to target getting TSLA below those numbers of Friday. If volume remains at 8M or above with buying pressure, though, the hedge funds likely don't have the horsepower to engineer the kind of dips we've been seeing for the past two months going into Fridays.

Percent of selling by shorts dipped to 56% today, still a very high number. The one saving grace for the manipulators today is that the shorting they did after 3pm and into close would likely be profitable. That situation contrasts with their experience over the previous two and a half days.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that at its height today, TSLA had unwound all of the losses of the post P&D report dip. Let's hope we can reclaim the high ground of 244 tomorrow and work from there.

Conditions:
* Dow down 314 (1.19%)
* NASDAQ down 133 (1.67%)
* TSLA 240.05, up 2.33 (0.98%)
* TSLA volume 8.7M shares
* Oil 52.43
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 56%

 

[The Accountant]

Let's hope we can reclaim the high ground of 244 tomorrow and work from there.

You nailed it:

 

[Papafox]

TSLA continued its climb, reaching 247 before backtracking a bit into close. The pushdown into close was a repeat in many ways of Monday's afternoon dip, and was again likely engineered by creative short-selling. Percent of selling by shorts continues to be high at 56%. Volume dipped a bit from Monday and came in at 6.7M, which made TSLA more susceptible to manipulations. Those manipulations are less obvious than in prior months, but we did see one mega-selling spree at 10:34am when the sale of 41K shares knocked TSLA down a noticeable amount, but it immediately recovered.

Adding additional complexity is the inevitable arrival of day-traders to take advantage of the trends with this stock. Their play would be to buy in the morning and sell once the downward dip into close first begins.

There was no linear dip into close today. Instead, buyers gave bursts of bidding up the stock during the descent, at which point further selling was needed to reinvigorate the dip.We also saw an upturn to the stock price in the final 15 minutes, despite the NASDAQ falling. I think the upturn would be either hedge-funds covering their daily shorting or traders taking advantage of the pattern and buying in with the expectation that there will be more rise tomorrow. In time, a pattern such as the pushdown into close gets defeated as traders game the pattern and remove its sting.

The NASDAQ closed up 1.02% today in a strong and stable climb that only faded in the final 20 minutes

Looking at today's Opricot max pain graphs, you can see that 235, 237.50, 240, 245, and 250 and popular call option strikes that the hedge funds want to avoid paying out. An upward trend to the stock price plus higher volume will make their job more difficult this week.

Shorts again were tagged with 56% of TSLA selling today, a continued high amount suggesting continued manipulations

Looking at the tech chart, you can see that TSLA has returned to the 244-245 level where the hedge funds have been so successful in keeping the stock price from rising above. The current climb has more momentum than most the other attempts visible on the chart, however, and may be more akin to the successful push through this level in July, leading up to the Q2 ER. What you don't want to see is a climb that leads into a red close like we saw around Sept 12.

Today Tesla announced that the Q3 ER will be held two weeks from Wednesday, on Oct. 23. This shorter time frame puts some pressure on the acquiring longs to complete their positions prior to that event.

The big question for Wednesday's trading will be whether TSLA can continue the climb or whether the hedge funds will succeed in holding the stock at this level. There's much at stake. The bears have fabricated a story that TSLA is now in a long-term 150-250 trading range. A climb above 250 puts that fairy tale in jeopardy, and so the bear community has a stake in protecting the story, which requires that TSLA remain below 250. Volume and positive macros would be very helpful to TSLA's continuing the climb. It comes down to a question of horsepower. Is there enough buying pressure to offset the significant manipulations?

Conditions:
* Dow up 182 (0.70%)
* NASDAQ up 80 (1.02%)
* TSLA 244.53, up 4.48 (1.87%)
* TSLA volume 6.7M shares
* Oil 52.44
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 56%

 

[Papafox]

If only we could learn from history. Today TSLA ran high very early in the morning on news of the Q3 ER being scheduled for two weeks from the day. Alas, this quick run to nearly 249 put the stock price in a perfect setup for the hedge funds to walk it down with heavy short-selling mixed with buying algorithms, and you can see that between 11am and 12:45am there was a very significant walking TSLA down when no news nor macro activity warranted such a more. Moreover, take a look and compare today's chart (above) with September 12's chart (below). In both cases (see tech chart), the stock was at the top of a climb and the hedge funds felt the need to chop off the climb with a solid selling effort. In the case of Sept 12, that dip ended the runup and began the horizontal trading at about 244 that lasted a month (with some ups and downs).

What's notable is how the selling by the hedge funds has changed in the two instances. On Sept. 12, you can see extreme volume needed to push the stock price down. You can also see extreme volume of selling in specific one minute increments. The hedge funds have now refined their algos to eliminate these clear telltales of manipulation. In their place, is an all-too-perfect arc as the stock price curved over and headed into the red.

What came next for both dates is the inevitable whack-a-mole maneuver in which TSLA is sold as necessary to keep the stock price from peeking its little head up into the green.

Between 11am and 12:40ish, the hedge funds made a lot of money with today's TSLA pushdown. The remainder of the day was slightly negative as the stock slowly rebounded back into the shallow green. Profiting from such manipulations is illegal, but we see no evidence that the SEC is willing to take on these manipulations. Back on September 12, the hedge funds did their manipulations with short shares obtained from non-FINRA sources, and consequently the % of selling by shorts that day was a low 34%. Today's 56% selling by shorts number suggests lots of ammo needed by the hedge funds to pull off their dirty work, but the spikes in selling for particular minutes of time have greatly been reduced and the maneuvering of the stock price is now much smoother. I suspect the hedge funds are going to have to adjust their algos again, because the curves are too smooth and too apparent at present

September 12 chart (for comparisons)

What's interesting about the NASDAQ chart is that it stayed very strong between 11am and noon, but TSLA lost much of its gains during this time period. Clearly, macros were not the reason for the pushdown we saw in TSLA during late morning.

For the third day in a row, percent of TSLA selling by shorts came in at 56%

Looking at the tech chart, compare the Sept 12 trading (first red candle on left) to today's trading. What the hedge funds are trying to do, at least through Friday, is to follow the game plan from Sept 12 and see TSLA trade horizontally. Can they pull this off? They might, but working against them is the realization by shorts that their comrades are jumping ship. This places upward pressure on the stock price as more shorts get nervous and cover their positions.

What would make a tremendous difference is if the hedge funds that have been manipulating TSLA and have been liquidating their short positions are ready to take up long positions. If the very significant downward pressure on the stock price is relieved, then the stock would go up and the hedge funds, which had been profiting by manipulating TSLA in a narrow price range could then make money riding the stock price up. Stranger things are possible. We could assume this is happening if percent of selling by shorts numbers drop significantly, followed by seeing a significant rise in the stock price. I'm not holding my breath, but this seems to me to be a profitable tactic that's available to the hedge funds if they find holding the price of TSLA level is too hard with shorts now covering at a noticeable rate and if they are in fact just about done covering to close their own short positions.

Conditions:
* Dow up 151 (0.57%)
* NASDAQ up 47 (0.60%)
* TSLA 244.74, up 0.21 (0.09%)
* TSLA volume 6.2M shares
* Oil 53.55
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 56% (for third day in a row)

 

[Papafox]

Friday was the day that the hedge funds were ready to do another push-down and salvage some (but not all) of their sold calls that expired this day. Alas, politics threw a curve ball at them with the news that some type of trade deal was likely transpiring, with results to be released after a 2:45pm meeting at the White House. Because of the news, macros traded well up, and TSLA was buoyed by the macros to an extent that manipulations just weren't going to work very well. The stock spent an hour above 250 in the morning. You can see the noon to 1pm walk-down of the stock price as hedge funds tried to engineer a dip, but the market said, "Nope!". Thus TSLA spent the afternoon rising and falling as buyers bid the SP up and the hedge funds started it back down again. Finally, word of the trade deal started leaking out, with a smaller deal than some had been hoping for (Part 1 of a multi-part negotiation), and so you saw the macros descend in the final 20 minutes of trading. This was an opportunity for hedge funds and market-makers to add some shorting to the mix to get TSLA closer to the desired 247.50 close as possible.

Of note is the fact that volume has been much higher this week than in past weeks, with 8.5M shares trading on Friday. Every day of this week has been a green day for TSLA as shorts continued to cover and as we now know the reason for TSLA being so resilient to macro pressures earlier in the week.

The NASDAQ put in a solid day as traders awaited word on a trade deal with China. The final 20 minutes suggests reaction to the reported deal, which was less extensive than hoped.

Nonetheless, TSLA gained about 67 cents in after-hours trading, suggesting that upward momentum still exists.

The percent of selling by TSLA shorts number dropped again today, to 52%. Such a dip could suggest that the manipulators are preparing to scale back their manipulations, or it could simply mean that Friday was a bad environment for making money with these manipulations. Monday will give us a better idea.

This is the S3 Partners September 30 report that showed TSLA at 39.17 million shares shorted on Sept. 30, the day NASDAQ later confirmed had only 36.06 millions shares. Just how in the world can Ihor miss the covering of nearly 9% of TSLA's short shares?

Here's his Oct 10 chart, which shows a more reasonable interpretation of the NASDAQ numbers. Notice that the downtrend of short interest continues. Why would he wait 10 days to share information this critical to TSLA investing? His techniques are either inadequate for following short interest or he intentionally delayed reporting a big covering move by the shorts in order to cater to customers who were closing positions before anyone really notice. In any event, we need to take Ihor's numbers with a big grain of salt in the future because of this event.

The important point to note from the revised chart is that shorts are indeed jumping ship, which encourages other shorts to do the same and places continued upward pressure on the stock price. If Tesla does indeed begin Model 3 manufacturing on Oct 14, that event could be a positive catalyst for the week.

Looking at the tech chart, you can see an unusual streak of 5 green days, leading the TSLA stock from from the low 230s to exceeding 250 for a portion of Friday. Since so much of the bear story is that TSLA is locked in a 150-250 trading range, a climb and close above 250 next week would open many eyes regarding the potential for this stock.

If you follow shipping from San Francisco's Pier 80, you'll know that shipments to the UK and Europe are well ahead of any other quarter so far. Demand is strong, new markets are opening (Iceland won't even see its first real deliveries until Q1 of 2020), and production is above 7K/wk now (best guess). Shanghai factory could begin turning out Model 3s for customers next week. No wonder shorts are covering.

For the week, TSLA closed at 247.89, up 16.46 from last Friday's 231.43. It's been a good week. Enjoy your weekend.

Conditions:
* Dow up 320 (1.21%)
* NASDAQ up 106 (1.34%)
* TSLA 247.89, up 3.15 (1.29%)
* TSLA volume 8.5M shares
* Oil 54.70 (on 10/12)
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 52%

 

[Papafox]

Congratulations longs, we cracked 250 with room to spare in today's close. That's a big deal because with the exception of a brief period in July when TSLA was running up to the Q2 ER, we haven't been above 250 at close since May. Today pretty much drives a stake through the heart of the bear statement that TSLA is locked into a long-term trading range of 150 to 250. Nope.

During the first hour of trading, TSLA remained in the twilight zone of "maybe up, maybe down today" as the climb was insufficient to ensure that an afternoon pushdown wouldn't take TSLA back into the red. An hour into market trading, though, as TSLA fought to top 252, volumes ran high and at 10:35am we say 41K shares trade in a single minute as shorts covering and longs adding fought the hedge funds who were intent to keep TSLA constrained below 250. After that, it was time to climb with no looking back.

Once TSLA crossed 257 in early afternoon, there was no way the stock was going to be pushed down significantly, and if you look at the chart above you can see attempts to start a downtrend that were quickly eaten up by buying. As I said before, I think covering by the more intelligent shorts is what started the ball rolling and TSLA's trading today clearly exceeded the ability of the hedge funds to constrain it.

The macros were neutral to slightly down today, and the NASDAQ closed down 0.10%

Looking at the Opricot max pain chart for Friday's closing (10/18) you can see that lots of big option plays will expire. Because of all those 50 and 75 puts that will expire worthless, the scale of the graph is distorted and you need to read the numbers to understand just how many open calls are out there. Those 230 calls look solid and can't be touched, but if the hedge funds are still playing games, as it appears they are, then large numbers of 250, 255, 260, and 265 calls are in play this week. It would be very expensive for those 265s to be paid out, so expect to see serious efforts to rein TSLA in. On the other hand, if you have the volume and buying of today, that buying can overwhelm the manipulations and allow the stock price to run higher.

Shorts were tagged with 53% of TSLA selling today, up slightly from Friday. If you were watching the stock in the afternoon, you could see the attempted pushdowns as the hedge funds probed for weakness, but TSLA always managed to bounce back.

Looking at the tech chart (blue line is now the 100 day moving average) you can see that in the recent 6 trading sessions TSLA climbed from just above the lower bollinger band to slightly above the upper bb. The chart shows what we've been through, lately. July was a climb above 260 in anticipation for the Q2 ER. August was spent in a wild game of dips on steroids, followed by recoveries, followed by another dip and recovery. September saw TSLA recover to the mid-240s but the stock price could not muster a close above 250 because the hedge funds managed to retain control. Finally, in October TSLA climbed from the high 220s that resulted from the dip on steroids reaction to the Q3 P&D report to a close above 250 again.

After a string of 6 climbing days in a row, and with hedge funds apparently still defending sold calls that may not have been delta-hedged, and with the SP above the upper bb now, the most likely scenario would be some consolidation soon before the stock resumes its climb. Good news that kindles fear in the shorts might push the stock higher before the consolidation, however. It will be important for TSLA to remain above 250 during this time, however.

Conditions:
* Dow down 29 (0.11%)
* NASDAQ down 8 (0.10%)
* TSLA 256.96, up 9.07 (3.66%)
* TSLA volume 10.1M shares
* Oil 53.52
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 53%