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I’ve been here before. Back in 1990, Polly Peck’s Asil Nadir, clearly all too well informed that the scam was coming to an end, declared that he would arrange a buy-out. The trouble was that no bankers could be identified who shared his optimism. The share price kept slip-sliding away until, eventually, it could no longer be propped up. Thereafter it imploded, and suspension followed a few hours later.
I suspect that Elon Musk is in the same position with Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). Yesterday’s shenanigans as the great con artist tweeted out his intention to take TSLA private at $420 a share (or $82 billion all told) obviously hit the shorts pretty hard. But gravity being what it is and the improbability of bankers putting up the necessary for a company marching to insolvency surely means that the only way is down. TSLA has been trading this morning before the opening at $376.
If these bankers are as ready as Musk claims they’ll write puts. And then they may not be….