30% of the float is short in Tesla (TSLA). Does it matter?
Discussed in this article: Tesla Motors Inc. ( $TSLA )
I want to look at our old friend Tesla ( $TSLA Tesla Motors Inc ). I’m telling you, this is a stock that’s going to bite you if you’re not careful; this is a stock that should be lower. Look how far it is above the 200-day moving average, I mean it’s stupid high; $45.00 is the 200-day moving average, the stock is up at $103.00. That’s what? I don’t know, mental math, 130 percent, something like that, somewhere around there, some mathematician with a calculator is going to find that out in two seconds. But its way above the 200-day moving average, it should be lower.
Here’s the problem; first of all they’ve got earnings coming up on July 22nd, that should be the catalyst for this stock, because pretty soon, and I don’t know what the blackout period is, if it’s a month for or whatever, but there’s a certain amount of time where the company really can’t say anything just before earnings. You’ve got July 22nd as the earnings date for this company. They’ve got what, Consumer Reports I think it is, Motor Trend, whatever, calls essentially a perfect car, like ninety-nine out of a hundred; once it gets to be about three or four hundred miles on the mile limitation, then I’m in, I’ll be happy to buy one as long as they make a big one. But for now I’m just watching the stock and here’s the thing; 30 percent of the float is short, okay. That’s a massive number of shorts in this stock; this stock is not going down. Now that total was as of March 31st so perhaps over the last eighteen days the reason this stock has been kind of floating upwards is because a lot of those shorts have been covering. I know if I were short, I would.
But in any event the stock is not doing what it should do, it’s not moving down. So we have to anticipate that it is going to move higher. Just keep something in mind; while they are over eighteen million shares short, the short ratio is actually pretty low, okay, 1.27. The reason is because the stock trades over eight million shares a day. So it won’t actually take that many days, and this isn’t an exact number, but it won’t take that many days for all of the shorts to cover if that’s what they choose to do.
What I’m suggesting is that you at least don’t get complacent with this stock; know that if the stock starts hitting the upper Bollinger Band that’s going to be different, it hasn’t done that for awhile, and so you’re likely to see this stock blast to new highs. If the stock starts trading lower here, because of earnings I just don’t think there’s that much of a cushion. Let me put it a different way; I think there is a cushion, I don’t think there’s going to be that much downside to this stock because of the anticipation of earnings. Think about it, after the positive publicity over the last several months don’t you think Tesla ( $TSLA Tesla Motors Inc ) has probably done pretty well as far as sales? My bet is they have.
So the question will be, will the numbers that are announced actually meet what are likely to be really high expectations of the company? That’s your risk reward, that’s the risk that you have to take into account. I like Tesla ( $TSLA Tesla Motors Inc ) even here, it’s kind of an ugly chart, I don’t see it blasting off anytime soon, but if it starts hitting the upper Bollinger Band, if you’re an active trader, I think you want to be there. If it starts closing below the middle Bollinger Band then I don’t think you really want to mess around with it until earnings. We’ll be watching this, could be that we’ve got a great buy point prior to earnings, which could be really profitable.
Free Chart