Tesla Investor has shorted the stock “because I don’t think all the bad things have been reflected in the price yet” and predicted a “possible drop to this level.” (Benzinga Newswire) 3/14/2024 12:24am

Tesla Inc TSLA fell sharply on Wednesday on concerns about its ability to meet demand expectations in connection with Wells Fargo’s fall in valuation.

That added to the downward pressure as major Tesla investor and YouTuber Kevin Papras announced his decision to sell the stock short.

Criticizing the Federal Reserve: “I’m going to short Tesla,” declared Kevin Papras, who is well known as “Meet Kevin” on YouTube and social media.

“But I feel like I’ve turned my back, and a lot of this is not even related to Tesla and what the Federal Reserve is going to do to us,” complained Fabras, who has nearly 2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel and about 339,000 followers on X.

He clarified that his short position is only short-term.

Looking at the recent reversal in consumer price inflation, Fabras cited the stagnation of structural inflation despite a sharp drop in cyclical inflation since June 2022.

Speculating about the Federal Reserve’s upcoming summary of its economic outlook, he said that contrary to market expectations for a rate cut, it may suggest a rate hike as a response to inflation.

There’s a lot of risk: “But what you have in the short term is kind of a political Tesla, where Elon Musk went from CEO of Tesla to CEO of Twitter and now he’s CEO of the Border Special Division.

So you have a political weight on him, and there’s a real Twitter financing risk,” Fabras said.

He also warned of liquidity risks for Tesla, noting that Musk’s involvement in other projects could redirect the EV maker’s resources.

In addition, Fabras pointed to potential challenges such as worsening transportation costs and margin cuts to geological tensions and promotional incentives.

“Good conditions for interest rates to come down from now until the end of next year are probably not going to happen sooner than expected, and rates may come down sooner than we thought,” said Fabras.

Looking Ahead: Fabras looks set to drop to about $148 in the near term, suggesting there is a strong level of support at $101.

“The situation Tesla is in is unfortunate, and I don’t think everything bad has been reflected in the price yet, so unfortunately I think it will get worse before it gets better.”

Tesla closed Wednesday’s trading session at $169.48, according to Benzinga Pro data. Here’s certainly why Elon was so furious with Bill Gates’ short-selling of Tesla.

Bill Gates is a real trash.

Some of Walter Isaacson’s book excerpted by CNBC.

In early 2022, Bill Gates, who happened to be at the same conference, told Elon Musk, “I want to meet you and talk about philanthropy and the climate.” The sale of his shares prompted Musk to donate $5.7 billion to a charity fund he founded due to tax issues. Gates, who was spending most of his time doing charity work at the time, wanted to make several suggestions.

The two have had several friendly relationships in the past, including when Gates brought his son Lori to SpaceX. Musk could relate to Gates’ hardcore and persistent creation of the company. The two agreed to schedule a visit, and Gates, who has a team of schedulers and secretaries, said he would have Musk’s scheduler call from his office.

“I don’t have a scheduler,” Musk replied. He wanted to have complete control over his schedule, so he decided to get rid of his private secretary and scheduler. “Just tell the secretary to call him in person.” Gates felt it was strange for one of his secretaries to call Musk, so he called him in person and set up a time for him to meet in Austin.
“We just landed,” Gates texted on the afternoon of March 9, 2022.

Musk sent Omed Afshar to the entrance of the Gigafactory to meet him, to which Gates replied, “Cool.”

Among the rarest people who have the title of the richest person on Earth, Musk and Gates have several things in common. They both have analytical thinking, an ability to focus like a laser, and an intellectual conviction that is wary of arrogance. Neither of them does anything stupid. All of these characteristics made it likely that when Musk started giving Gates a tour of the factory, there would eventually be a collision.

Gates claimed that batteries cannot power lorries and that solar energy cannot be a major part of solving climate problems. “I showed him numbers,” Gates said. “It was an area where I clearly knew what he didn’t know.” Gates also had different opinions about Musk and Mars. Gates later said, “I’m not a Martian.” “He’s overreacting about Mars. I had Musk explain his idea about Mars, which was a bit of a bizarre idea. It was a crazy idea that even if a nuclear war broke out on Earth and humanity on Earth was destroyed, people on Mars would descend on Earth and civilization would survive.”

Nevertheless, Gates was impressed by the factory Musk built and his detailed knowledge of all the machines and processes. He also admired SpaceX, which has deployed Starlink satellites on a large scale to provide internet in space. He said, “Starlink is a realization of what I was going to do at Teledic 20 years ago.”

Towards the end of the tour, the conversation turned to charity. Musk mostly expressed the view of “nonsense.” He estimated that every dollar he invested would only affect 20 cents. He thought that investing in Tesla could do more for climate change.
Gates replied, “I’ll show you a total of five projects, 100 million dollars each.” He listed funds for refugees, American schools, AIDS treatment, eradication of some mosquitoes through gene drive, and genetically modified seeds that will resist the effects of climate change. Gates is very enthusiastic about the charity and has promised to write Musk a “very long description of the idea.”

There was one contentious issue that the two had to deal with. Gates made a big bet when he shorted Tesla stock that it would depreciate. However, he was wrong in his prediction. When he arrived in Austin, he lost $1.5 billion. Musk was outraged by the news. Short sellers were occupying his hellish space. Gates said he was sorry, but he couldn’t appease Musk. “I apologized to him,” Gates said. “He was very mean to me when he heard that I shorted the stock, but he was very mean to a lot of people, so you shouldn’t take it too personally.”