Tesla enters delivery week with short sellers continuing to retreat and options traders unusually calm, a combination that sits in contrast to the stock's 6.9% slide on the week to $352.84.
The short cover flagged in Sunday's note has carried into Tuesday's close. SI % FF fell to 2.07%, down from 2.66% on September 18, the lowest reading since before the August rebuild began. The week-on-week drop of 7.8% in shares short is the continuation of a sharp unwind that started on September 22 to 23, when around six million shares were covered in two sessions. The borrow market offers no friction to either side: cost to borrow is 0.35%, near its lowest level of the past month, and availability is effectively unconstrained. There is no squeeze pressure and no signal that new short interest is being added in size. The ORTEX short score eased further to 30.99, down from 31.57 a week ago, consistent with a market leaning away from the bearish trade rather than toward it.
Options positioning, unlike last week, shows no elevated hedging. The put/call ratio closed at 0.779 on Tuesday, almost exactly in line with its 20-day average of 0.779 and a z-score of essentially zero. This is a notable shift. The previous note flagged a PCR of 0.80 and a z-score of 1.66 as the most defensive options posture in several weeks. That signal has fully dissipated. At the 52-week low of 0.68, there is room for the ratio to move toward outright bullishness, but for now options traders are neither hedging nor pressing calls. The market is flat on conviction ahead of delivery numbers.
JP Morgan's Rajat Gupta trimmed his price target from $445 to $415 on September 28, citing Q3 delivery concerns, while keeping a Neutral rating. Goldman Sachs reiterated Neutral at $360 on September 16. Both bellwether firms are within 2% to 15% of the current price, suggesting the Street's cautious middle is roughly anchored to where the stock is trading. The bull case from StoneX at $475 and the bear at GLJ Research at $24.86 reflect an unusually wide dispersion; the GLJ target looks disconnected from any reasonable current-price framework and is better understood as a structural short thesis than a near-term call. The consensus mean sits at $395.83, implying around 12% upside from Tuesday's close. On valuation, the PE multiple has compressed roughly 10 points over 30 days to 171x, and EV/EBITDA has dropped around 36 points over the same window. Both moves reflect the stock underperforming into the back half of September. The forward earnings momentum score has weakened too, with the 90-day EPS momentum factor ranking in only the 12th percentile, though the 12-month forward EPS growth rank holds at the 70th.
The one dataset with a measured, backtested relationship to Tesla's quarterly revenue is German KBA registrations, published by Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt. That series has been shown to lead revenue by 43 days, with a strong fit across 18 quarters and a 100% directional hit rate. With two of three months of Q3 now in, German Tesla registrations are running 33% above the same period last year, at 3,401 vehicles. That is what the data shows for the quarter in progress. It is not a revenue forecast, but it is the only registration series with a verified lead relationship, and the direction is up year-on-year.
The last earnings print is the clearest piece of historical context worth carrying. On July 22, Tesla fell 15.6% on the day and a further 21.3% over the following five sessions after Q2 results. SI % FF was above 2.79% going into that report. It is now at 2.07%. Bears have already done a significant amount of repositioning before Q3 delivery numbers arrive. The setup is less crowded on the short side than it was three months ago, and options traders are not yet pricing in a similar dislocation. What to watch is whether the delivery print this week shifts either of those conditions: a miss could rebuild short interest quickly given the July template, while a beat removes the most immediate bear catalyst ahead of the October 21 earnings date.
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