Tesla lost $40.1 billion last year, biggest loss in history

The analysis of financial data company S3 Partners shows that Tesla’s stock price rose by 743% in 2020, pushing the company’s CEO Musk’s worth soaring by more than 100 billion US dollars, causing shorts to lose up to 40.1 billion US dollars.

Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of S3 Partners, said that this is not only the biggest loss suffered by all shorts in any stock last year but also the biggest short loss in history.

In fact, Tesla’s short losses last year exceeded the combined short losses of the other nine stocks. Investors who shorted Apple lost $6.7 billion last year that is only slightly higher than the one-month loss of Tesla’s short position in December.

Amazon’s shorts lost $5.8 billion last year. For a long time, Tesla has been the favorite target of short investors. At the start of 2020, they controlled approximately 19% of the company’s shares. They insist that ‘Tesla is a niche market participant that has been overhyped and will soon be crushed by larger and more mature automakers.’

But as a result, many bears were forced to admit defeat last year. In 2020, about two-thirds of short positions are closed, which in itself is a factor driving Tesla’s stock price rise, because short investors are forced to buy higher-priced stocks to exit their positions.

In 2020, the shorts still held approximately 5.5% of Tesla, which is equivalent to betting $31 billion on the company’s future. In contrast, Apple and Amazon have short positions of $13.3 billion and $10.2 billion, respectively, equivalent to less than 1% of the shares of the two companies.

(Via)