‘Big Short’ Eisman is now shorting Tesla

Steve Eisman, the Neuberger Berman Group money manager who famously predicted the collapse of subprime mortgages before the 2008 financial crisis, is shorting Tesla because of the car maker’s negative cash flow.

“Elon Musk is a very, very smart man but there are a lot of smart people in this world and you’ve got to execute. He’s got execution problems,” Eisman said. “He’s nowhere in autonomous driving, as far as I can tell, and big competition is coming in his space next year.”

Tesla, whose eroding cash position has alarmed investors, has asked some suppliers to return a portion of payments for parts to help the electric-car maker to turn a profit. CEO Musk has said that Tesla will be profitable in the third quarter of 2018 because it will produce 5,000 of its Model 3 sedans a week. It exceeded that threshold in the last week of June, but has yet to prove it can continue to meet those numbers.

The fund manager said he was also betting against Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria and UniCredit because of their exposure to Turkey. He likes General Motors because of its investment in autonomous vehicles.

Eisman’s bets against the housing market before the 2008 crisis were chronicled in Michael Lewis’s 2010 book The Big Short, which highlighted money managers who foresaw and profited from the market turmoil.