Tesla Is a Stock-Picking Nightmare. Or Is It a Dream?
The automaker violates a tried-and-true investing playbook. Perhaps the game has changed.
Disruptor or pretender?
Photographer: Frederic J. BrownAFP/Getty Images
There may be more riding on the future of Tesla Inc. than cars. The electric-vehicle maker has become a flashpoint in a heated debate about whether traditional methods of stock picking have outlived their usefulness.
Tesla didn’t ask to be at the center of the dispute, but two high-profile and opposing bets on the company’s stock made it inevitable. On one side, wielding the old playbook, is hedge fund manager David Einhorn. His fund, Greenlight Capital, has bet against Tesla’s stock for at least three years. Einhorn raised the stakes last April, rhetorically if not in actual dollars, writing to investors that Tesla is “on the brink” and that Chief Executive Elon Musk “never admits the crisis.”