Musk Meltdown Continues On Twitter As Elon Accuses Analysts Of Pushing “Short Thesis”

Elon Musk’s bizarre Wednesday meltdown, when during the conference call he cut off analysts from Bernstein and RBC, accusing them of asking “boring, boneheaded” questions, continued this morning on twitter, when he personally attacked Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi and RBC’s Joe Spak, accusing them of “trying to justify their Tesla short thesis” and were working against the interest of investors.

Well, some blame “Russian” when things don’t go their way, others find blame with “sell-side” analysts who are “trying to justify their Tesla short thesis.” And for the record, Tesla fell 5.6% to close Thursday at $284.45, just above Sacconaghi’s $265 price target and almost in line with Spak’s, who sees the shares falling to $280.

Of course, Musk’s latest sad display of petulant anger, which rewards those analysts like Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas who have idiotically high price targets, merely indicates that Musk has no idea how this works at all: sellside analysts don’t do anything to justify a thesis, whether long or short, that’s what buyside anlysts are for; all the sellside does is serve as conduits to arrange management meetings. And in the case of RBC and Bernstein, they clearly won’t be doing that any time soon – and certainly won’t be invited to participate in any upcoming Tesla stock offering – so at least their analysis is credible, which may be what most angered Musk.

Actually, no, what infuriated Musk is that Tesla shares had their biggest drop in more than a month on Thursday after the earnings call, in which Musk said the questions “are so dry,” and turned instead to one from a channel on the YouTube video-streaming service; he also urged ‘daytrading’ retail investors to sell the stock if they don’t believe the long-term vision of the company.

That’s precisely what they did.

Meanwhile, the Musk meltdown continued on Twitter, where in his latest mood swing, he unexpectedly disclosed that the “news is actually super good. Model S & X are producing major positive cash flow & Model 3 is about to do same.”

Then, in response to a clear objection by a twitter user, who responded to Musk’s slam of the analysts, said that “The fact that you were clearly unable or unwilling to give a straight answer to valid and pertinent cash flow questions is a huge red flag to any investor” led to the following response:

Musk then went the pity route, stating that “it’s important to know that Tesla is the most shorted (meaning most bet against) stock on the market & has been for a while.”

Yes, it is, and that’s for a reason: increasingly many believe that this company which burns over $12 million a day and where things are going from bad to chaos, is a fraud.

Musk then repeated his original charge, claiming that “The 2 questioners I ignored on the Q1 call are sell-side analysts who represent a short seller thesis, not investors”

Only then did Musk reveals his original reason for cutting them off: “The reason the Bernstein question about CapEx was boneheaded was that it had already been answered in the headline of the Q1 newsletter he received beforehand, along with details in the body of the letter.”

Actually, the question was not boneheaded in that it explicitly wanted clarity behind the assumptions of this slowdown, which were lacking in the letter, although with this response it now appears that instead of accusing them of pushing a short thesis, Musk has now decided the analysts were simply lazy.

For now, the musk tweetstorm continues, as time approaches 5am Pacific, suggesting Musk has been up all night, much of it spent tweeting. Readers can track his latest tweets here.

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