Today was trading day 3 of mixed-to-neutral macros, and TSLA once again traded up. This time, however, the manipulators clearly put in more effort trying to disrupt TSLA's eventual climb than they did yesterday. The mandatory morning dip brought TSLA to a low of about 229.30 around 9:40am and then the stock headed higher. a few series of whack-the-mole took place until about 11am and then TSLA began a substantial climb. Notice the huge trading spike at 58K shares at 10:32am. You'd think this would be a buying spike, but actually TSLA dropped 10 cents on that minute, suggesting someone was selling like sugar to stop the climb and didn't make much progress. For nearly an hour beginning around 1:35pm, we saw apparent capping to keep TSLA below 235, followed by another big selling spike of 46K shares at 2:24pm, which served its intended purpose and pulled TSLA down a dollar. The bulls weren't through for the day, however, and with the NASDAQ heading upwards in the final half hour, TSLA managed to close above 235.
With 130K shares sold in the final minute of market trading and with a jump up to 36% of TSLA selling tagged to shorts today, TSLA was certainly seeing attempts to manipulate lower but the buyers kept buying.
News today included more info on the VW ID.3 that shows the vehicle just isn't very good at highway range. Almost certainly the culprit is a form factor that looks good to the eye but is lousy at aerodynamics. We'll get a chance to see what European shoppers really value, a cute little in-town car, or something that is long road-trip attractive such as a Tesla Model 3. I suspect there will be plenty of buyers for both types of cars.
Other news:
* Forbes published a hit piece that covers all the dated bear concerns about TSLA but doesn't do a decent job of looking at where Tesla is currently heading with its Q3 gains.
* The Street published a bullish article that says that TSLA could rally 15% to 268 if certain technical marks are achieved
From high to low, the NASDAQ varied about 1% today before closing close to neutral with a 0.04% loss
From the wack-a-mole to the huge selling spikes, to the nearly one hour of capping at 235, manipulators were working TSLA today but not having great luck at it. Shorts were tagged with 36% of TSLA selling today.
Take a look at what is developing on the options side. Call buyers are going for 242.50s in a big way with 6K in open interest set to expire on Friday. 240s are also popular, which means that perhaps the hedge funds will be forced to defend 240 and 242.50 while TSLA runs up through the 230s. Fingers crossed.
Looking at the tech chart, please notice that we seldom went 5 trading days without a big dip on steroids (macro or FUD plus short-selling to put the dip on steroids). Notice that the hedge funds now need such a day badly soon to keep TSLA from running above the strike prices of calls they sold that expire on Friday. So far this week, the manipulators have been 0 for 2 in stopping the bull charge. Don't be surprised to see another attempt at an MMD in the morning.
A big development today was TSLA closing above the 50 day moving average (shown in blue). The 50 DMA was one of the technical points mentioned in The Street article referenced earlier. I suspect shorty will put his best foot forward in trying to steal that 50 DMA back in the morning. If he fails, the bulls will likely want to run further.
Conditions:
* Dow up 74 (0.28%)
* NASDAQ down 3 (0.04%)
* TSLA 235.54, up 3.75 (1.62%)
* TSLA volume 4.9M shares
* Oil 57.92
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 36%