Tesla ‘most shorted stock’

Musk defends earnings outburst

Elon Musk has turned to Twitter to offer an extraordinary defence of his decision to ignore analysts’ “boring, boneheaded” questions at Tesla’s earnings call and instead respond to queries posted by retail investors on Youtube. The billionaire’s unusual decision was blamed by some for the electric car company’s shares dropping 8pc as Tesla reported its biggest ever quarterly loss on Wednesday.

The $709.6m (£525m) loss was better than Wall Street had forecast, along with stronger than expected revenues.

Explaining his decision in a string of tweets, Mr Musk said that the company was the most shorted stock on the market. This means that some are betting Tesla’s shares will fall and they stand to gain if the price drops.

The chief executive added that the two questioners he ignored were “sell-side analysts who represent a short seller thesis, not investors”. A query from Bernstein was “boneheaded”, he said, because it had been answered in the documents released with the earnings.