That goes for this entire subthread, not just this comment.
Edit: I have no idea why I'm being so downvoted here. All I am saying is that short sellers have incentive to hand the media whatever they can to help their case (not so controversial, right?) and that the media might be taking it for free rather than, as the parent poster says, coordinating to specifically harm Tesla (is this the controversial bit?)
For example, let's say I think IBM has oversold 'Watson' AI. I would take a short position in IBM and start publishing my concerns. Fair enough. But if I start camping outside every hospital that uses Watson, badgering staff going in and out, it should at least raise eyebrows... Same with all the claims the Tesla short-sellers manage to spread by spending their lives flying planes over factories and camped out near parking lots trying to count vehicle production/sale figures, leading to mainstream media publishing vague allegations like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/business/tesla-cars-quest...
They also diluted investors with a capital raise they had strongly hinted wouldn't be needed, and at the autonomy day presentation for that raise they made bold predictions about essentially level 5 autonomy by 2020 (seemed like a lie to me and the entire team was restructured a few weeks later: https://electrek.co/2019/05/10/tesla-autopilot-restructuring... ).
But sure, everyone else is manipulating the stock...
They act as though Tesla is the only company in the world that has stock fluctuations, short sellers, bad press etc. It's never that the company was bleeding money in a quarter, saw a significant decline in ARPU, had to borrow money again, purchased SolarCity at a massive loss and has an erratic CEO who promises the world and fails to deliver. No it's a conspiracy involving dozens of large companies.
No, but the only one with a cap this big. Sure, there are tiny companies with crazy stuff happening. You have another example of another company with a two-digit billion dollar market valuation that sees anything remotely like this kind of volatility?
Tesla is also unusual in having an extremely large P/E compared to the typical S and P 500 company. That means it's being valued on future expectations, not present realities. Expectations of the future can swing much more wildly than those for present based businesses.
Why should we take them seriously?
Still waiting for the supermicro retraction or proof of claims. At this point, it simply looks like stock manipulation.
I trust these financial media companies 0%. It seems patently obvious they’re manipulating stocks. Why poison my mind? Seeking Alpha, CNBC, Bloomberg all seem to be the stock manipulation wings of god knows what funds.