-- Hedge funds piled into short bets against Tesla Inc. right before the electric vehicle maker unveiled a set of numbers that triggered a hefty share-price rally.About 18% of the 500-plus hedge funds tracked by data provider Hazeltree had an overall short position on Tesla at the end of June, the highest percentage in more than a year, according to figures shared with Bloomberg. That compares with just under 15% at the end of March.
Meanwhile, the list of internal disruptions at Tesla is long. In April, Musk told staff to brace for major job cuts, with sales roles among those affected. And the Cybertruck, Tesla’s first new consumer model in years, has been slow to ramp up. Investors ended 2023 declaring they’d likely retreat further from green stocks in general, and EVs specifically, according to a Bloomberg Markets Live Pulse survey. Almost two-thirds of the 620 respondents said they planned to stay away from the EV sector, with close to 60% expecting the iShares Global Clean Energy exchange-traded fund to extend its slide in 2024. The ETF has lost 13% so far this year after sinking more than 20% in 2023.
But Eirik Hogner, deputy portfolio manager at $2.7 billion hedge fund Clean Energy Transition, suggests there may be more pain to come for the wider EV industry. There are still “way too many” startups that remain “sub-scale” and with gross margins that are simply “too low,” he said. As a result, the supply-demand dynamic of the EV market “is still very negative.”The maximum CPP payout for a 70-year-old starting a pension in 2024 is $1,937.73.