NEW YORK (Reuters) – Short interest in Tesla Inc stood at 3.6% of the company’s float, according to analytics firm S3 Partners, down from about 8% at the start of the year as the electric car maker’s share price has soared and short sellers have covered their bets.
The number of shares shorted stood at 29.5 million, down from 60.6 million at the start of January, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners.
Short interest in Tesla still amounted to nearly $36.1 billion, larger than for any other stock, according to S3.
Tesla shares were down 3% on Monday as investors prepared for its chief Elon Musk’s proposed sale of about a tenth of his holdings in the electric-car maker following his Twitter poll.
(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf)