Elon Musk’s red satin Tesla ‘short shorts’ sell out in minutes

Elon Musk took a jab at Tesla short sellers over the weekend — announcing a limited-edition pair of satin “short shorts” — and they sold out in minutes.

The red-and-gold shorts, whose description on Tesla’s website says buyers will “enjoy exceptional comfort from the closing bell,” sold out in less than five minutes after Musk tweeted out the link to his nearly 37 million followers.

The sale of the shorts — which display the model names of Tesla’s four vehicles, spelling out “S3XY” across the back — came after Tesla crushed vehicle delivery expectations last week, bringing its stock to an all-time high and its market cap well over $200 billion.

That was a bitter blow to so-called short sellers, who place bets that a company’s stock price will go down, and get slammed with losses when it rises. Prominent investors who have shorted Tesla shares include hedge-fund managers David Einhorn and Jim Chanos.

Tesla is now the most valuable automaker on earth. Its stock was up 7.3 percent Monday morning, trading at $1,296.76. The electric automaker is up more than 460 percent from the same point last year.

“Tesla will make fabulous short shorts in radiant red satin with gold trim,” Musk tweeted.

The shorts were on sale for “Only $69.420!” Musk tweeted on Sunday, an apparent reference to his famous tweet in 2017 that he planned to take take Tesla private at $420 a share — a pot joke he said was for his girlfriend. The misleading tweet landed Musk in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission, forcing him to pay hefty fees and surrender his role as chairman.

Telsa said it delivered 90,650 vehicles in the quarter, down just 4.9 percent from the year-earlier period, despite factory shutdowns due to the coronavirus. Analysts had been expecting the car company to delivery just 72,000 cars due to the closure of its Fremont, Calif., factory, which resulted in Musk publicly sparring with California officials.