Tesla's "Reckless" Management Will Lead to Its Demise, Says Short-Seller
*By Michael Teich*
The entire market is in a bubble, according to Mark Spiegel, a short-seller at investment firm Stanphylーand Tesla may be the biggest one of all.
"It's a terrible business," he said in an interview on Cheddar Tuesday. "The financials are terrible and getting worse."
Tesla stock closed below $300 a share on Tuesday, its lowest level since early June. Shares are down 20 percent from their highs of the year. Spiegel thinks it's only a matter of time before the stock really crashes.
There's plenty to rattle investors. The company has burned through $8 billion in cash over the last four years and has more than $10 billion in debt. On Sunday, a report emerged that the company was asking for refunds from suppliers to help it turn a profit, though Tesla said it was only negotiating contracts on projects that were still active. And late Monday, the company said a top sales executive was leaving the company.
Spiegel said the recent string of executive departures is a sign of rising fatigue among insiders. He also said Elon Musk is partially to blame, calling his leadership reckless and describing the CEO as an "incredibly deceptive guy."
"He thinks you have to be as smart as he is to see through his BS. When in fact you don't have to be, you can just fact check."
One potentially problematic area, for SpiegelーTesla's self-driving cars, which he says aren't nearly as safe as CEO Elon Musk would like.
"Their autonomous driving tech is way behind," he added. "What they put on the road ... does more than what other people are willing to put on the road"
Tesla will report its second quarter earnings on August 1.
For full interview, [click here] (https://cms.cheddar.com/videos/VmlkZW8tMjA5NzM=).
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
President Donald Trump's administration last month awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build and operate what's expected to become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex to a tiny Virginia firm with no experience running correction facilities.
