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Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, poses on the red carpet when he arrives at the 43rd “Goldenes Lenkrad” (golden flyer) on November 12, 2019 in Berlin. Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is, frankly, a huge follower of Twitter. He did it again Thursday afternoon with Tesla’s shares on the rise, and Tesla’s bears licking their wounds.
He tweeted around 2:25 pm EST “Who wears shorts?” with two laughing emojis crying. A response from a follower “Chuck Norris!”
Chuck Norris is a popular internet meme. A meme fit for Musk, also the CEO of SpaceX, says: A Chuck Norris spinning kick is so powerful that it can be seen from outer space with the naked eye.
Tesla shares are up nearly 200% so far this year, crushing comparable returns for the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and its auto peers. Tesla shares rose another 7.8% on Thursday after two bits of good news.
Despite the incredible gains, Tesla is still haunted by bearish investors. More than 10% of the stocks available for trading are short-sold by investors who are betting on falling prices, a level much higher than the average short interest for stocks in the Dow. Bearish bets have not worked lately.
There were two more tidbits of good news on Thursday that raised shares. First, Wedbush analysts Dan Ives published a bull target price of $ 2,000. Its official price target is $ 1,250. That report led to Tesla sourcing in premarket.
Then came the second quarter delivery numbers. Tesla delivered around 90,000 cars during the second quarter, despite the pandemic. The delivery figure was higher than Wall Street’s most optimistic estimate.
It’s been a whole week for Tesla stock. Stock rose approximately 25% in the past few days as analysts reviewed second-quarter delivery numbers. The street began to realize, shortly after the quarter ended, that the delivery numbers were probably too low, but no one correctly predicted how strong the second quarter ended.
Tesla is now the world’s most valuable company, as measured by market capitalization. Toyota Motor (TM) can be even bigger, as an entity, by including debt. But Toyota, like other traditional automakers, has a large financial arm that makes comparisons difficult.
Whatever the measure used, the value of Tesla and the recent stock execution is remarkable.
Musk did not stop with the shorts. He also tweeted about the SEC later Thursday.
Investors have to take the weird with the good when it comes to Musk. He also recently tweeted that the shares are “too high” and simply LOL, short for laughs, for his 36.4 million followers.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
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