Comment: Anything that does not kill Tesla makes him stranger

COMMENT:

The short sale of Tesla's shares is the Escher's "waterfall".

In the wake of the interview given by CEO Elon Musk at Axios this weekend, here is a brief summary of some of the events of the past year:

• The short sellers claimed that Tesla was about to go bankrupt and / or needed to raise a lot of capital and bet accordingly.
• Tesla said it does not need to raise capital;
• Musk just did the aforementioned interview with Axios and admitted that Tesla "bleed money like crazy" and in the "one-digit weeks" of death at some point in the past year;
• Despite the validation of previous suspicions of short sellers, the stock was up at the start of trading on Monday.

I mean, are not you entertained?

Recall that, back on April Fool's Day, Musk tweeted a series of jokes about Tesla's supposed risk of bankruptcy. Was it during the period of "one-digit weeks" in question? Tesla's opposed when I asked about timing, but that's entirely possible.

Tesla spent nearly 1.7 billion USD (2.5 billion USD) in the first half of 2018. Just days after Musk's tweets, the company revealed that she had not reached her reduced production target for model 3 in the first quarter – the accelerator for all this money.

In the same publication, however, Tesla did everything to say that it "does not require any capital or debt increase this year, with the exception of conventional credit lines".

So, surely, that can not be the period in question, because how could Tesla proclaim financial strength even though the edge of the waterfall is visible? If no, then, when was it?

Tesla published quarterly and annual reports on the usual risk factor for having enough money for debt service and also admitted that the production schedule of Model 3 was problematic.

But I do not remember any public disclosure of a potentially imminent disappearance in the past year.

You might think the CEO would be reluctant to make public statements seemingly inconsistent with previous public statements. Especially when he just had to settle a lawsuit with the SEC because of problematic public statements about a possible takeover that was suffering from an unfortunately tenuous attachment to reality. All the more so because the bylaw forced him to relinquish his position as president and to submit his future public statements to a prior review.

The interview comes shortly after the surprisingly positive results of the third quarter, although questions remain as to their sustainability.

Pervantly, revealing the apparent experience of imminent death of Tesla, the Musk interview not only offers a rationale to short sellers, but also provides a narrative for the bulls that the worst is really behind the company.

The latter also reflects the perception of believing supporters that Tesla is an outsider capable of getting out of the worst circumstances, like a $ 59 billion MacGyver.

In this sense, Musk cooperates with one of the arguments put forward by those who bet against him, even as he revives chronic concerns about liquidity and governance. Fascinating things. Yet, like so many others at Tesla and his CEO this year, I wonder: why do that?