Tesla Shares Tumble On Report Of Robotaxi Unveil Delay

Tesla's 11-day winning streak abruptly ended Thursday afternoon after a Bloomberg News report revealed that the EV maker plans to delay the unveiling event of the highly anticipated 'robotaxi' from August 8 to sometime in October.

Bloomberg cites 'people familiar with the decision' who say the robotaxi unveiling will be pushed to October to "allow teams working on the project more time to build additional vehicle prototypes." 

On April 5, Musk posted on X, "Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8." 

Around that time, Musk called out Reuters for lying about Tesla's plan to scrap low-cost cars. 

In early June, we told readers, "TSLA remains one of the most shorted names in the hedge fund space and is one of the biggest mutual fund underweights." 

Shares soared nearly 62% from June 10 in a massive short squeeze. We penned this note: "Tesla's Furious Rally Is Another Massive Short Squeeze."

Following today's BBG report, shares sank as much as 8.3% on Thursday, the largest intraday decline in four months. 

Here is GLJ Research's take on mounting disappointments for Tesla: 

A lot of investors trade around these TSLA days/events, many of which have turned out to be sizeable disappointments (i.e., Battery Day + Cybertruck Unveil + AI Day 1.0 + Optimus Day 1.0 + etc.); and now that "Robotaxi Day 8/8" its not happening as originally scheduled, the folks trading TSLA's stock into this event are likely now sellers (welcome to investing in 2024). Furthermore, given the run-up in TSLA's shares the past 11 days (the 74-day RSI is a whopping 74.6), the selling could be quite material.

Recall that JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman penned a note after the JPMorgan European Automotive Conference in London last month explaining that robot taxis are "years" away. 

Days ago, Tesla blog Teslarati speculated about a "Tesla Model 3 mule spotted with interesting cameras ahead of Robotaxi unveil." 

X users are waiting for Musk to respond to the Bloomberg report.