TSLA chart above
QQQ chart above
I hope no one was surprised by Tuesday mandatory morning dip. It's the logical play on a Tuesday when the stock price went bonkers on Monday. Scare away the traders with the dip, and then with the lower volume (only about half of Monday's) tweak TSLA so that it closes right around your desired level. I don't buy the media's claim that Elon's firing in the supercharger group was the reason for the dip. Tesla is still going to build superchargers. The dip was coming whether or not that story even came out, and I strongly suspect Elon had a good reason for doing so. The media always goes through the list of news stories and says, "Ah ha, that has to be the one."
Why did TSLA close around 183 instead of below the 180 call wall? Glad you asked. It's early in the week yet, and the options are going to shift around with the stock price and expectations. What we know is that puts generally grow on the low side of the stock price and calls on the high side. If you want puts to grow at 180, why would you push TSLA below 180 this early in the week? Investor hunger for TSLA shares could rekindle as the week goes on, and a better strategy might be to let puts grow at 180 and only move TSLA below 180 if the market really wants to take it down or if it's Friday.
We saw an oversized dip of TSLA compared to the macros in late pre-market and early market trading. This is likely where the market makers used most of the 62% of selling short shares they generated. TSLA got down below 185 and into the 185 to 180 sweet spot by about 11am. Unfortunately for the market makers, the macros then swooned and they had likely overdone the shorting earlier in the day. No problem, they just started covering some of those short positions in the afternoon, which allowed TSLA to barely dip in the afternoon even though QQQ was losing ground. At day's end, TSLA saw 62% of selling tagged to shorts with 7.7M shares trading hands in the 4pm closing cross. TSLA lost 5.55% to Nasdaq's 2.04%.
Percent of selling tagged to shorts came in at a really high 62%, suggesting that options sellers were shorting the "sugar" out of TSLA at certain times on Tuesday
Yields on 10 yr. treasury bonds climbed to 4.67% on Tuesday
Max pain Tuesday morning ran all the way up to 180. It didn't make a difference, because the target of the market makers this week is to diminish the disparity between calls and puts at 180 (by keeping the stock price somewhat above 180) and then pushing the stock price below 180 on Friday if calls continue to outnumber puts by too much.
Tuesday's TSLA options volumes
TSLA is back below the upper bollinger band after one day outside.
Conditions:
* Dow down 570 (1.49%)
* NASDAQ down 325 (2.04%)
* SPY down 8 (1.58%)
* TSLA 183.28, down 10.77 (5.55%)
* TSLA volume 125.7M shares
* Oil 81.16
* IV 47.4, 49%
* Max Pain 180
* Percent of TSLA selling tagged to shorts: 62%
* Volume at 4pm closing cross: 7.7M shares