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Comment by CarelessExpert | Hacker News Reader

> After Theranos and Wirecard, I'm surprised how much benefit of the doubt Nikola is being given

Thank Elon.

His war on shorts has created a narrative that's gotten eaten up in the tech sector. Heck, you can see it in the comments on this post.

We poor tech companies are just the victims of these big, bad, evil short sellers. If you'd just leave us alone, man, so much disruption! We just need a few more billions and, we swear, we'll be profitable in no time.

Edit: Apparently people are getting very confused by the point I'm making here.

I'm not saying Telsa and Nikola are equally fraudulent.

I'm saying Elon Musk is responsible for pushing and promoting a narrative to de-legitimize short sellers, and in doing so, has undermined an important function in the markets that helps prevent companies like Nikola and Wirecard from succeeding in defrauding the public.

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Actually, people with engineering backgrounds see a huge difference between Elon and this guy. It is Wall Street who doesn't understand and is afraid to get burnt by NKLA the way other naysayers were burnt on TSLA.

> Actually, people with engineering backgrounds see a huge difference between Elon and this guy.

I didn't say Elon and this guy were similarly shady.

I said Elon has been a huge voice in pushing and promoting a narrative that short sellers are evil, and that then allows frauds like Nikola and Wirecard to flourish.

And I stand by that statement. In what way am I wrong?

TSLA has sued NKLA for IP theft. I have a hard time seeing how they are pushing a narrative that short sellers of NKLA are evil.

Actually, Nikola sued Tesla:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/05/nikola-motors-sues-tesl...

This story just gets crazier and crazier.

Elon has been pushing conspiracy theories about short sellers for years. As a direct consequence of this, there are many commenters on this site who believe that short selling is generally nefarious and some who even think it should be banned altogether.

Funny how the possibility of a lying short seller gets all their consternation while lying CEOs do not.

In case of Tesla we have pretty well document case of short-sellers doing exactly what Elon said. Paid anti-Tesla articles were absolutely a thing that happened. Not to mention a constant stream of other FUD and accusations of fraud.

Tesla has revenues - real revenues at least. They have real products. Nikola? What do they have? Is it their hyrdrogen breakthrough (10% of current cost)? I doubt that's real. Their battery breakthroughs? Again, pretty doubtful that's real.

> Tesla has revenues - real revenues at least. They have real products.

So did Enron. That doesn't mean there's no fraud to be found.

> Before its bankruptcy on December 3, 2001, Enron employed approximately 29,000 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000.

Much of that apparent revenue was fraudulent, but not all of it. Enron really was an energy company, but was also engaging in fraud.

Tesla short sellers (TSLAQ) delegitimized themselves pushing nonsense narratives that repeatedly turned out to be false. Nikola's short sellers' research is of far better quality.

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