Gary Zhou 
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is a great Twitter user to track. He was at it again with Tesla shares soaring Thursday afternoon as Tesla bears lick their wounds.
He tweeted in around 2:25pm EST, “Who’s wearing short shorts?” With two smiling emojis. One follower responded, “Chuck Norris!”
One meme fitting for Musk — also SpaceX’s CEO — goes: A roundhouse kick from Chuck Norris is so strong that the naked eye can see it from outer space. To date, Tesla shares are up nearly 200 percent year to date, crushing comparable returns from the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and peers in the automotive industry.
After positive news, Tesla shares are up another 7.8 percent Thursday. Despite the impressive profits, bearish investors are still dogging Tesla.
More than 10% of shares available for trading are sold short by investors betting on price declines, a much higher level than the average short interest for stocks in the Dow. Bearish bets haven’t worked out lately.
There were two more tidbits of good news Thursday, which pushed up shares. First, Wedbush analysts Dan Ives published a $2,000 “bull case” price target. His official price target is $1,250. That report had Tesla stock up in premarket trading.
Next came second quarter delivery figures. Tesla delivered about 90,000 cars during the second quarter, despite the pandemic. The delivery figure was above the most bullish Wall Street estimate.
Over the past few days, the stock has risen by around 25 percent as analysts revisited delivery numbers in the second quarter. Soon after the quarter ended, the Street started to understand that delivery figures were possibly too low, but none correctly estimated how strong the second quarter would finish.
Tesla is now the most valuable auto company in the world, measured by market capitalization. Toyota may still be larger, as an entity, when including debt. But Toyota, like other traditional auto makers, has a large finance arm which makes comparisons difficult.
Whatever measure is used, Tesla’s value and recent stock run is remarkable.
Musk didn’t stop with trolling the shorts. He also tweeted about the SEC later Thursday.
Investors have to take the odd with the good when it comes to Musk. He also recently tweeted about the stock being “too high” and simply LOL, short for laugh out loud, to his 36.4 million followers.
Want to buy a Tesla Model 3, Model Y, Model S, or Model X? Feel free to use my referral code to get some free Supercharging miles with your purchase: http://ts.la/guanyu3423
You can also get a $100 discount on Tesla Solar with that code. No pressure.
