(BFM Stock Exchange)-According to data from the company S3partners cited by the Financial Times, the Hedge Funds selling Tesla Upon Action Odulnered have released latent capital gains of more than $ 16 billion in accumulated since mid-December. This is obviously explained by the tumble of action.

For the “hedge funds”, these investment funds that try risky strategies than institutional investors, Tesla has everything ideal for “spieler” (“play”). Very volatile, the title knows spectacular flights which can very quickly be followed by violent correction, and vice versa.

A year ago, in March 2024, Tesla suffered, and fell 34% over the whole year, which then constituted the worst drop in the S&P 500 ahead of Boeing.

The title will then benefit from a dizzying increase, to the point that the action will finally take 63% in 2024, thanks to an incredible post-election rally of Donald Trump, the market anticipating measures favorable to the company, especially in the autonomous vehicle.

Enough to give your hedge funds dizzy who “short” the value via the uncovered sale.

As a reminder, this stock market technique consists in betting on a fall in action, selling a title that we do not hold. To do this, the investor, borrows the action he wishes to “Shorter” on a sort of securities rental market (the “repo”), with a remote to the shareholder who lends him the title.

However, the situation has completely changed in a few months. Since a peak of 479 dollars has reached on December 17, the Tesla action has evolved in free fall, losing 53% since that date.

Consequently, the “hedge funds” selling the uncovered title accumulated large potential gains. According to data from the company S3partners cited by the Financial Times on Tuesday, March 18, these funds total a total of $ 16.3 billion in potential capital gains since December 17.

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Free fall sales

However, the Financial Times stresses that, since the Tesla Stock Exchange in 2010, in the open sellers have totaled still vertiginous valu losses, of $ 64.5 billion, even after taking into account the gains made over the last three months.

Remember that the fall in Tesla action in the past few months is explained by several elements.

Like all American technological values, the group was penalized by a “rotation”, that is to say that investors redirect their funds to other sectors deemed more promising than tech, especially on European actions.

According to a monthly survey carried out by Bank of America with asset managers and published on Tuesday, investors surveyed by the establishment have greatly reduced their exposure to American shares in March, with a drop of 0.4 percentage points, for the benefit of the actions of the euro zone, with a gain of just under 0.3 percentage points.

This rotation has been fueled by good American economic indicators in recent weeks, but also by fears that Donald Trump’s policy penalizes the American situation.

Beyond this global market trend, Tesla suffers from her own problems. Last week the title was sealed by commercial figures in free fall in China. Sales to individuals in this country plunged 87% over a year in February when local competitor byd recorded a 90% leap, according to data cited by Royal Bank of Canada.

These figures succeeded, moreover, in bad sales in Europe, where Tesla registrations dropped by 45.2% (including the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway) in January.

The worst quarter since 2022 to come?

Cited by Forbes, the JPMorgan bank last week estimated that Tesla should publish its lowest automobile deliveries since the fall of 2022, for the first quarter of 2025. The American bank anticipates a drop of 8% over one year to 355,000 units. JPMorgan had lowered its price target to 120 dollars against 135 dollars previously, which amounts to thinking that the action will fall by almost 50%.

Tesla is penalized by an aging range of products. The group has promised that new “more affordable” models would be launched this year.

Since the beginning of the year, Tesla action has also been penalized by Elon Musk’s political ambitions, which decided to pilot an unofficial department in Washington to cut the ax in the expenditure of the American federal state, have been able to worry investors. This department is called “Doge” for “Department of Government Efficiency”.

“In short, the word ‘balance’ failed in Elon Musk and its ability to direct Tesla as director general …. instead of concentrating all its energy and its time leading its Doge initiative within the Trump administration,” deplored last week of Wedbush in the note.

“We believe that this is a” moment of truth “for Musk and Tesla …. If Musk continues to follow the Doge’s Way at 110% and not to take care of Tesla during this period of turbulence, the damage to the brand will become more and more important, because currently our work on the field shows that less than 5% (very limited) of Tesla owners would hesitate to buy a Tesla again” dissected the analyst.

In addition, Tesla wrote a letter to the Trump administration “suggesting that higher costs due to customs duties could weigh on the competitiveness of American exports”, and therefore on its own competitiveness, notes Deutsche Bank.

Often “Bullish” (very optimistic) on Tesla’s prospects, Elon Musk had written on his social network X (ex-Twitter) in the summer of 2024 that once the group’s autonomy and robotics technologies have reached important production volumes, any investor who would still have a selling position on Tesla would be “destroyed”.