Devoted Whole Mars readers may remember our story from just last week revealing that noted Tesla short-seller Mark Spiegel had covered half of his Tesla short position. After devastating losses in December, Mark reduced his Tesla short from 20% to 10% of his portfolio.
We received many comments from readers who were scratching their heads after reading the story. “After blowing 11% of his clients’ money in December, who in their right mind would still put 10% of their fund into another Tesla short bet?”. Well, Mark BS would.
As Tesla shares reached stratospheric new heights this week, kissing the $500 mark, Mark was forced to cover half his Tesla short position once again. According to a tweet posted earlier, his Tesla short position now stands at just 5% of the portfolio. I’m sure this time things will work out fantastically for him!
Just what kind of bet did Spiegel make? As Mark revealed earlier, his firm Staph Infection Capital had bought a “very large” amount of January 2020 $200 puts. Essentially, he spent 20% of his fund on contracts that would allow him to sell Tesla shares for $200 each in January 2020 (which is now).
If Tesla shares were at $100 or even $150 as Mark was expecting, he would have been able to make a killing buying Tesla shares for $100 each and selling them via the put option contract for $200. However, Tesla shares aren’t worth $100 –– they’re worth $500. That means that the “very large” number of put options Spiegel purchased are “out of the money”, “underwater” or “a zero”. Because you can sell Tesla shares on the open market for nearly $500, an option to sell them for $200 is completely worthless.
Mark Spiegel is famous for shorting fast-growing companies. He has been shorting Tesla for at least half a decade and isn’t tired of losing money yet. He also shorted Amazon stock when it was $100. Other than that, Spiegel is well known for trading stocks from his toilet in Manhattan.
Spiegel now admits that there is no way he will ever make back the money he lost shorting Tesla and net a profit. We wish Mark the best of luck on his future endeavors and are praying for his $TSLAQ bagholder friends and victims.
Mark Spiegel just had to cover half his short position AGAIN
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Did you see he posted that some of his family members are buying Teslas? 🙂
What a complete tool. He still acts like he’s this financial guru and always plays the victim when it doesn’t go his way. Then he insults everyone. Spiegel represents some of the worst aspects of wall street: greed, arrogance, and stupidity. Like for example, how stupid do you have to be to look at Tesla’s lower than industry standard lease rates and call that a bad thing? The man should be in jail for defrauding his clients and lying about Tesla on mainstream media, yet he calls Elon a fraud and a criminal. He’s a pure projection machine.
The whole concept of short-selling seems despicable to me. I’m not a fan of stocks in general, but this type of trading is malevolently wicked. These bastards bet against the success of people and companies objectively better than them. They do not add value to anything but their wallets (well, if their little scheme works), they produce nothing and thy add nothing to culture or society.
Especially thugs like Spiegel that not only bets against innovation because of some apparent grudge, but he actively uses his media presence to spread lies and FUD. How is this not criminal like insider trading? How come this low-life can repeatedly call somebody a fraud in hopes to stifle investors and costumers and sink the stock without being sued into oblivion?
It’s literally the same every single time a $TSLAQ clown announces capitulation: “my thesis was right, $TSLA is worthless, but the stock price just won’t reflect my reality, so I’m out…”
(Well, actually, there was exactly one notable exception: the Citron guy actually admitted to being wrong. While I can’t say I think highly of his analysis — either before or after his reversal — I have to commend him for being able to admit his error…)