Yea I didn't follow the op's comment either. Shorting is not permanent or even a long term position. I mean..you could hold it for a longer term period I guess. In 2008-2009 there wasn't many other options to choose from. Short selling is basically selling a stock you don't own. You borrow against the stock when you think their is opportunity. Tesla was a pretty easy short honestly if done right. Personally I didn't short it, however I have enjoyed shorting Netflix, Google, Facebook and Amazon over the years. It sounds crazy to short Google right? But there were times when it was obvious there would be declines. Not permanent but short term. I personally never held someone all the way down, I'm in for a quick profit and out before the bounce. Sometimes I'll buy the stock after I short it so I can gain from the bounce as well.

All that said I feel Tesla is a good company but if I was focused on them I'd just as well look for shorting opportunities. If it's not evident, I'm a fan of short selling.

Good to get a perspective from a short seller. Thanks for posting.

Personally I'm the opposite -- I only go long for the long term. But that's what I decided my risk tolerance was as a mid 30-year old. So far my long position in TSLA since late 2013 has been a pretty good result.

Thanks for the reply. My apologies for the delay. I'm used to places like reddit giving me notifications about replies so I just didn't really realize there was a reply. Risk tolerance is a very personal thing. It varies with individual and as a short seller I've grown to accept it a bit more.

For any investment, one simply can not know everything. I gave TSLA up for another area which as paid well. I use to own in Google after the IPO, even during my ownership I would short at times. The same is true with any stock I'm long. If there is an opportunity that I'm comfortable with then I take it.

I think too often people talk about short selling without any real experience doing it. So often it's realities get distorted with chatter. 2008 I learned to short basically during hands on learning as there just wasn't any great opportunity when things were going crazy. There were other great opportunities, my personal favorite was the government shut down under Obama and the predictable re-opening. That was some glorious profiteering right there...

Some of them will have, but not all. Shorting a stock gets expensive. Anyone making a bet that Tesla will run out of cash and wipe out its equity are probably still loosing.

"Short sellers who believe shares of are due for an imminent decline are paying a hefty price to place their bets, with some shelling out what amounts to an annualized cost of between 90% and 120%" http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/09/22/teslas-short-selle...

It's currently up 1.65% in after hours trading.

The person above claimed that people "lost their shirts" shorting Tesla. Clearly if they were down within normal trading hours, some of those shorts would have paid out. That was what I was responding to.

The fact that Tesla rebounded after hours is neither here nor there. The shorts may have already paid out.

If someone shorted TSLA going into earnings, they probably lost money. It's up 10% in a month, and it's up in after hours today. It doesn't matter if it dipped a little today (as stocks often do before earnings). It's practically at an all time high.

Unless they shorted it in the morning and closed out their position by the end of the day it's highly unlikely they made money on it.

Check out the run up in the last month. People shorting were shorting at under $220-230/share. It's now hovering at $280.

http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2017/02/07/tesla...

And now down 6% after the market opened... Shorts are having a great day.

Buy (or short) the rumor, sell (or close) the news. If you look at the past two months it's grown $75 a share, $25 a share in the past 30 days alone. After hours trading is up, but for the grey edge grinders it was time to profit harvest.

Who are the "grey edge grinders?"

Traders who get their 'edge'(alpha) from grey information.

White = information easily available to the public. Say, like SEC filings or press releases.

Grey = information between white and black. For example if you over heard a CEO mention something vague to a colleague at a bar and think you can act on it.

black = clearly material insider information

It's up 2% after hours...

I think he meant when TSLA was at $190 to $200 at the time of the merge and the uncertainty of the model 3 production.

> People who shorted Tesla made money today

Unless they shorted a month ago or earlier.