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The stock market’s recent weakness may soon come to an end, according to veteran technical analyst Larry Williams.
“The charts, as interpreted by Larry Williams, suggest that …. we’ve got a fabulous setup for a meaningful, possibly long-lasting rally that no one is looking for,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Wednesday broke down fresh technical analysis from veteran chartist Larry Williams, who concluded the stock market’s recent weakness may soon come to an end.
“The charts, as interpreted by Larry Williams, suggest that …. we’ve got a fabulous setup for a meaningful, possibly long-lasting rally that no one is looking for,” the “Mad Money” host said.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is an ‘always darkest before the dawn’ scenario,” Cramer said, offering his interpretation of Williams’ work. “That’s why I keep telling you to have some cash on hand as we do for the CNBC Investing Club …. ready to pounce when our favorite stocks come down to the right levels, even as the dire nature of Russia and Ukraine and the rampant inflation out there make you feel like it’s impossible to have a sustained rally.”
However, Williams believes the stock market may bottom within the next five trading days, Cramer explained. Among the reasons for Williams’ call is the latest data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, specifically the net holdings of small and large speculators — as well as commercial hedgers — for S&P futures contracts.
Here’s a chart showing the position of commercial hedgers for S&P futures — which in this case tend to be banks, mutual funds and possibly even governments — from 2018 to present.

Arrows pointing outwards

Technical analysis from Larry Williams that looks at the positions of commercial hedgers in S&P futures.
Mad Money with Jim Cramer

“Williams points out that his commercial commitments of traders index … went to its highest reading in the last five years. That tells him a lot of sophisticated money has entered the market on the long side, and historically that means a rally is coming,” Cramer explained.
The last time a reading was this high came in late March 2020, around the time the U.S. stock market reached its lows of the Covid pandemic, Cramer said, noting that ultimately proved to be a good time to buy stocks.

“Once again, the commercial hedgers are telling Larry that it’s time to hold your nose [and] buy something because he expects the S&P to bottom by next Tuesday,” Cramer said.
Cramer said another reason for Williams’ forecast stems from his proprietary indicator known as the WillVal. In this case, it’s measuring the valuation of stocks versus bonds. Historically, Cramer said that buying the S&P 500 when it’s cheap relative to bonds has worked out well.
Here’s a chart showing S&P futures versus the bond market from 2018 through present.

Arrows pointing outwards

Larry Williams’ proprietary WillVal indicator examining the valuation of stocks versus bonds.
Mad Money with Jim Cramer

“Sure enough, right now, at this very moment, the stock market’s incredibly undervalued compared to bonds, which is yet another sign to Williams that this is a buying opportunity,” Cramer said.
After looking at a few other parts of the technical picture, Williams still believes the market will soon get past its Ukraine-related weakness, Cramer said. “However, while he’s predicting a pretty good rally, he also acknowledges it’s going to be a choppy affair, not a direct staircase to heaven,” he added.
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CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday that a market snapback is possible if the current biggest headwinds, the Russia-Ukraine crisis and soaring inflation, ease up.
“We get a break in either one of these — inflation or Russian aggression — then you’re going to get a snapback rally of epic proportions,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday that a market snapback is possible if the current biggest headwinds, the Russia-Ukraine crisis and soaring inflation, ease up.
“For the market, it’s a two-front war: The one in Ukraine and the one where businesses are now in trouble if they don’t raise prices aggressively. … Neither is intractable,” the “Mad Money” host said.

“We get a break in either one of these — inflation or Russian aggression — then you’re going to get a snapback rally of epic proportions, the kind of rally we haven’t seen since 2020 when the kids stopped playing Call of Duty and started day-trading,” he later added.
Cramer’s comments Wednesday came after the S&P 500 fell further into correction territory, ending the session almost 12% below its Jan. 3 record closing high. It was the broad equity index’s fourth-straight negative session, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite have registered five-day losing streaks.
Wall Street and markets around the world have been shaky as investors monitor Russian aggression toward Ukraine. In recent days, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered troops into eastern Ukraine while U.S. and European officials have implemented economic sanctions in retaliation.

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At the same time, rising inflation continues to dog the U.S. economy, and in response, the Federal Reserve is expected to issue a quarter-point interest rate hike in March. The market expects further increases throughout the year.
If neither issue resolves, the market could be in for more tough times ahead, according to Cramer.

“Unless the West wins the war of words with Russia or Powell slays inflation, you have to expect more of these torturous days and fewer tortured young traders,” he said.

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There has never been a Black commissioner of a professional sports league in the U.S.
Experts and academics say leagues have a long way to go to improve representation in front offices, especially in the C-suite.

Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren looks on during the Big Ten Championship Trophy ceremony Game after the Michigan Wolverines defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes 42-3 on December 04, 2021, at Lucas Oil Stadium, in Indianapolis, IL.
Robin Alam | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

It’s been a heavy Black history month for professional sports.
Fired Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores sued the National Football League, alleging racist hiring practices. Rapper Eminem took a knee during the Super Bowl halftime show in support of Colin Kapernick, the quarterback who was blacklisted for kneeling during the national anthem as his way of protesting racial injustice.

Those stories have been all over the headlines. So has Washington officially renaming its football team the Commanders, more than a year after ditching their previous name, which was long considered a racist slur against Native Americans.
But there’s a another conversation involving race and sports. And it’s one that nobody is having, not in public anyway.
Across all U.S. major pro sports leagues, there has never been a Black chief executive, also known as a commissioner. Not in 102 NFL seasons, 75 seasons of the National Basketball Association or nearly 150 years of Major League Baseball. Add in the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and the WNBA, and that’s at least 28 pro sports league commissioners, of which none are Black.
“We can’t even get Colin Kaepernick on a team,” said Michael Eric Dyson, professor of African American studies at Vanderbilt University and a renowned scholar on race and culture. “So talking about a Black commissioner seems to be a leap of faith that is far ‘beyond the ken of mortal man’ — as they said on Andy Griffith Show.”
Following the social unrest in 2020, several private companies and organizations made commitments to improve their diversity. Goldman Sachs said it wouldn’t take companies public without at least one “diverse” board member or candidate. And even the NFL and NBA touted their pledges to “drive economic empowerment” and combat racial injustices among Black people with more than $500 million committed.

But it remains to be seen if push for diversity and economic improvement will spread throughout the leagues, including pro sports C-suite positions like CEO.

TIAA CEO Roger Ferguson, Jr. participates in the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit: A World of Change at The TimesCenter on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018, in New York.
Evan Agostini | Invision | AP

Lack of Black CEOs in America still a problem

And since sports is often referred to as a reflection of society, Roger Ferguson Jr. compared the matter to the lack of Black CEOs throughout America.
Ferguson Jr. was one of the few Black CEOs of a Fortune 500 company. In fact, he was one of just five Black CEOs to lead a top company when he led financial services company TIAA. Before his retirement in 2021, he steered the company through the global financial crisis and is credited with adding 1 million customers and increasing TIAA’s assets under management to more than $1 trillion.
Ferguson called the lack of Black CEOs a “multifaceted problem” and suggested diverse boards would help solve the issue.
“There’s more evidence that shows diverse teams, including in a business context, leads to better outcomes — and financial outcomes, not just cultural outcomes,” said Ferguson, who is also a CNBC contributor.
But though Ferguson, former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault and ex-Merck CEO Ken Frazier helped pave the way, there are still only a few Black CEOs that lead a Fortune 500 company. They include Thasunda Brown Duckett, who replaced Ferguson at TIAA, Rosalind Brewer, the CEO of Walgreens and Marvin Ellison, the CEO of Lowes.
Ferguson added he’s “cautiously optimistic” more top companies would seek to hire Black CEOs but warned that companies and sports leagues will need to address the matter, especially as Black consumers start to take notice.
“Boards need to understand that this is not merely a moral imperative,” Ferguson said. “It’s a business imperative. And frankly, particularly in sports when there are so many of the athletes who are African-American — so many of the fans are African American — people are going to expect to see the front office and the back office looking very much like the fan base and more like the teams. It’s going to be good business, not just morally right.”

Reggie Williams #57 of the Cincinnati Bengals dives on top of Earnest Jackson #43 of the Pittsburgh Steelers during an NFL football game September 18, 1988 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Williams played for the Bengals from 1976-89.
Focus On Sport | Getty Images

Race problems and the Reggie Williams nomination

Dyson, the Vanderbilt University professor, went beyond the corporate world. He suggested the ignorance around race matters remains the culprit in keeping Black executives suppressed, ensuring there would never be a Black commissioner.
“The intellectual elite thinks that Black people are good enough to supply physical labor but not intellectual and social leadership, which is ironic when you think about what we’ve done as civil rights leaders, as ministers, as corporate heads,” Dyson told CNBC. “There’s no lack of proof that Black people are equally capable as any other race or group of people to provide leadership of a league.”
Dyson called it “one of the last bastions of non-Black superiority.”
He added a false narrative remains that Black candidates aren’t “smart enough, savvy enough, well-connected enough” to fill a commissioner’s position.
“As a commissioner, obviously, you have to be connected,” said Dyson. “Being a commissioner indicates that you have a well-established relationship and the capacity to negotiate with those owners and on behalf of them in the broader arena. And there may be some skepticism about the ability of a Black person, male or female, to be able to engage in such activity.”
There was a Black commissioner on the lower sports level when Terdema Ussery held the title for the Continental Basketball Association, a minor league that folded in 2009. And in 2006, there were rumblings that a major pro a sports league was close to adding its first Black CEO.
Richard Lapchick, the chairman of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, was an early pioneer to suggest a Black candidate for a commissioner’s seat. He wrote a 2006 article for ESPN where he called for the NFL to hire former linebacker and respected sports executive Reggie Williams for the job. Williams’ name was floated as a possible replacement for then-Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.
And Williams had the credentials.
Williams played his entire career with the Cincinnati Bengals, served as a city council member while playing his last season in 1989 and became the first Black president at Disney. He’s also the mastermind behind creating Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex.
“I thought he was a great businessperson,” Lapchick said of Williams. “He had a football background. I thought his perspective was going to be refreshing for the NFL for a lot of the issues that were out there then and still today.”
NFL owners skipped over Williams, though, and gave the role to Roger Goodell, who went on to be one of the highest-paid CEOs in America. Goodell made an average of $64 million annually from 2019 to 2021, according to the New York Times.
Goodell’s deal ends in 2024, and there was some speculation he could retire after his current contract, which could create another chance at making history. But last week, Sports Business Journal reported Goodell was negotiating an extension, which the NFL denied.
But if Goodell does walk away, would NFL owners seriously consider a Black candidate?
Dyson said no.
“These owners have not evinced any indication, given any sign, that they are willing with their troubled and often traumatic racial beliefs, some of them antiquated — to move forward,” he said. “It would be great, but the lines of succession have dictated that it’s a white man’s club.”

Deputy Commissioner of the NBA, Mark Tatum holds up the card of the Detroit Pistons after they get the 1st overall pick in the NBA Draft during the 2021 NBA Draft Lottery on June 22, 2021 at the NBA Entertainment Studios in Secaucus, New Jersey.
Steve Freeman | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

Will there ever be a Black commissioner?

But as major leagues lag behind on diversity throughout the C-suite, the college sports landscape has moved forward.
In March 2019, the Sun Belt Conference hired Keith Gill, making him the first Black man to fill the role of commissioner in an NCAA football bowl subdivision conference. And in June 2019, Kevin Warren, the first Black chief operating officer in the NFL, took over as Big Ten commissioner. He became the first Black man to lead a Power 5 conference.
With his NFL business background and now gaining experience in a commissioner’s role, Warren is being compared to Williams as there’s speculation in sports business circles that he could one day be a pro sports commissioner, perhaps in the NFL.
“Absolutely,” Lapchick said when asked if he thought Warren is a good candidate. “I’ve admired him since his days at Minnesota.” 
Asked about the speculation he could one day be CEO in the NFL, Warren said, “I have faith in people. And I have faith that people are going to do the right thing for the right reasons and at the right time. I know what I can do is make sure I operate in this position at the highest level at all times.”
But Columbia University professor Len Elmore suggested the NBA would have a Black commissioner before the NFL. He used pro football’s problem of hiring Black head coaches as evidence that it’s not ready to added a Black CEO.
“You’ve seen plenty of qualified Black coaches out there, and [owners] know that they’re out there,” he said. “But they still go hire guys who are less qualified. That’s the difference — who are they comfortable with. That’s what I’m looking at.”

Team President Jason Wright speaks during the announcement of the Washington Football Team’s name change to the Washington Commanders at FedExField on February 02, 2022 in Landover, Maryland.
Rob Carr | Getty Images

A tough job to land

But again, the NFL doesn’t appear ready to make the move. And the NBA’s CEO job could be a ways off, too.
League commissioner Adam Silver’s contract also runs through 2024. He’s 59, and showing no signs of stepping away. Also, Silver remains the most popular commissioner in pro sports after he fired former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in 2014 for making racial remarks.
“That was the most important decision a commissioner has made during my lifetime,” Lapchick said.
Should Silver move on, though, Mark Tatum, the NBA’s deputy commissioner, could be in line to make history. Like Warren, Dyson said Tatum is “gaining experience, gaining all of the know-how, deploying his skill” to one day be a commissioner.
And a future name to lookout for include Washington Commanders team president Jason Wright, who became the NFL’s first team president in August 2020, during the social unrest.
Craig Robinson, the former Princeton standout and Oregon State University men’s basketball coach, is now the executive director at the National Association of Basketball Coaches. He echoed that sports owners need to overcome “institutional bias” before history can be made.
“I think we’re at a time where people are enlightened enough to understand that there are plenty of qualified candidates who could do a really good job,” Robinson said. “The commissioner is hired by the owners. And [the majority] of owners are white. So there’s the problem with just exposure. The owners being exposed to high-quality, high-performing, minority women and Black folks who can do the job.”
He added the commissioner’s seat “is hard to come by for the majority of folks because there are so few of them. A lot of stuff has to work, including the right time.”
Whether that time is near remains to be seen. Dyson argued sports leagues have numerous diversity issues to address before he envisions a Black CEO leading a major league.
“We can’t even get some of the more diverse issues argued about and straightened out within these leagues,” Dyson said. “Progress is certainly being made, but they are a reflection of the times. A Black commissioner is, unfortunately, and tragically years, if not decades off.”

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Goldman Sachs expects investment into its digital consumer platform to really pay off in less than two years, CEO David Solomon told CNBC on Wednesday.
Goldman Sachs launched its Marcus unit in 2016 in a push into digital-only consumer banking.
“I put out a target at the end of 2024 of over $4 billion of revenue for that business,” he said, adding the unit had about $1.5 billion of revenue last year.

Goldman Sachs expects investment into its digital consumer platform to really pay off in less than two years, CEO David Solomon told CNBC on Wednesday.
“I put out a target at the end of 2024 of over $4 billion of revenue for that business,” Solomon said in an interview that aired on “Mad Money.” “Last year [we] had about $1.5 billion of revenue, so we’re showing real growth in that business.”

“We’re expanding the customers. We’re expanding the products that we can offer. And when you look at that revenue going forward over the next three years, most of that growth is coming from investments that have been made” already, he added.
Goldman Sachs launched its Marcus unit in 2016 in a push into digital-only consumer banking.

After offering savings and personal loans, the firm added the Apple Card — and last year unveiled an investing product aimed beyond its wealthy clientele to everyone.
Since its inception, Marcus has taken in more than $100 billion in digital deposits from 10 million clients, Solomon said.
The recent launch of the My GM Rewards card, in partnership with General Motors and Mastercard, brought in 3 million clients, he added.
In pursuit of other opportunities to bolster its standing in consumer banking, Goldman Sachs last year agreed to buy fintech platform GreenSky for around $2.24 billion in stock.

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Shares of Goldman Sachs have dropped more than 10% in 2022, relatively in-line with the S&P 500’s year-to-date decline but roughly twice as much as rivals Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase.
Solomon also told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that banking activity overall is currently outperforming 2021’s performance but down from pre-Covid pandemic levels in 2019.
Still, the chief executive said he expects the digital consumer platform to grow sizably in the coming years.

“The build portion is basically in the ground,” Solomon said. “We’ve got a good runway to really expand the platform … and I know if we execute on it, ultimately, people will come to appreciate the value of what we’re doing.”

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“We need something that takes today’s role of natural gas, especially to manage seasonality and intermittency, and that is hydrogen,” Goldman Sachs’ Michele DellaVigna told CNBC.
Described by the International Energy Agency as a “a versatile energy carrier,” hydrogen can be produced in a number of ways.
One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.

The pump of a hydrogen refueling point at a gas station in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021.
Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Hydrogen has an important role to play in any transition to net-zero and its generation could develop into a market worth over $1 trillion a year, according to Goldman Sachs.
“If we want to go to net-zero we can’t do it just through renewable power,” Michele DellaVigna, the bank’s commodity equity business unit leader for the EMEA region, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” earlier this week.

“We need something that takes today’s role of natural gas, especially to manage seasonality and intermittency, and that is hydrogen.”

Hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries.
“It’s a very powerful molecule,” DellaVigna said. “We can use it for heavy transport, we can use it for heating, and we can use it for heavy industry.”
The key, he argued, was to “produce it without CO2 emissions. And that’s why we talk about green, we talk about blue hydrogen.”

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Described by the International Energy Agency as a “a versatile energy carrier,” hydrogen can be produced in a number of ways. One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.

If the electricity used in this process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some call it green or renewable hydrogen.
Blue hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced using natural gas — a fossil fuel — with the CO2 emissions generated during the process captured and stored. There has been a charged debate around the role blue hydrogen can play in the decarbonization of society.
“Whether we do it with electrolysis or we do it with carbon capture, we need to generate hydrogen in a clean way,” DellaVigna said.
“And once we have it, I think we have a solution that could become, one day, at least 15% of the global energy markets which means it will be … over a trillion dollar market per annum.”
“That’s why I think we need to focus on hydrogen as the successor of natural gas in a net-zero world.”
DellaVigna’s comments echo the analysis in a recent report from Goldman Sachs Research which he co-authored.
Published earlier this month, the report’s bull scenario sees hydrogen generation’s total addressable market having the potential to hit more than $1 trillion by 2050 compared to around $125 billion today.

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While there is excitement in some quarters about hydrogen’s potential, the vast majority of its generation is currently based on fossil fuels. Efforts are being made to address this, however.
The European Commission, for instance, has laid out plans to install 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyzer capacity in the EU by the year 2030.
During his interview, DellaVigna was asked about the stocks investors should look at to take advantage of the hydrogen sector’s projected growth.
“There’s two ways to invest in hydrogen,” he said. “One is to buy the pure play electrolyzer companies which … have the pure exposure to hydrogen.”
The alternative would be to invest “through conglomerates which already have hydrogen as part of their ongoing businesses.” This included energy service companies, industrial gas companies and oil and gas firms, he said. More

Estee Lauder’s executive group president, John Demsey, was suspended without pay over a recent Instagram post that included a racial slur, according to an internal memo viewed by the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal reported Demsey’s post made jokes related to Covid-19.
Last May, the executive marked 30 years at the New York-based cosmetic company.

Estee Lauder’s John Demsey attends the 2016 amfAR New York Gala at Cipriani Wall Street on February 10, 2016 in New York City.
Dimitrios Kambouris | Wireimage | Getty Images

New York-based cosmetics company Estee Lauder suspended John Demsey, an executive group president, due to a recent Instagram post that included a racial slur, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The social media post, which has since been removed from Demsey’s personal account, displayed a spoof book cover of the TV show “Sesame Street,” and contained the N-word and jokes about Covid-19, said the Journal.

“The content posted does not represent the values of The Estée Lauder Companies,” the company said in an internal memo obtained by the Journal.
Estee Lauder and John Demsey were not immediately available for comment when CNBC reached out.
Last May, the executive marked 30 years at Estee Lauder. Demsey, who oversaw brands like Mac and Clinique, was suspended without pay, the report said. The paper did not know the length of the suspension.
Estee Lauder shares closed Wednesday down 1.61%, at $290.93 a share.
Read the WSJ article here.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk took fresh shots at short sellers and the SEC, two of the billionaire’s most frequent targets for insults and criticism.
He also lauded the Justice Department for launching a probe into short sellers. Two one-time Tesla shorts are reportedly under federal investigation.
“I am greatly encouraged by the Justice Department investigating short sellers,” Musk told CNBC in an email Tuesday. “This is something the SEC should have done, but, curiously, did not.”

Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during a press conference at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on February 10, 2022.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told CNBC that he is glad to see the Justice Department is investigating short sellers, who have long been a target of the billionaire’s ire. He also took a fresh shot at the Securities and Exchange Commission, another of his frequent targets.
“I am greatly encouraged by the Justice Department investigating short sellers,” Musk told CNBC in an email Tuesday. “This is something the SEC should have done, but, curiously, did not.”

The Justice Department is reportedly investigating two investors who have previously shorted Tesla’s stock. The SEC, meanwhile, has been scrutinizing Tesla, which has prompted a vicious legal fight between the company and the regulator.

Musk has taken his grudge with the SEC to the public, insulting the regulator at times. In 2018, he called the agency the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission.” Nearly two years later, he made a vulgar dig at the SEC.
The SEC recently submitted a letter to a federal judge responding to previous allegations by Musk that the agency had “broken promises” and engaged in a “pattern of conduct” amounting to harassment after an earlier settlement agreement. The SEC had accused Musk of fraud in 2018.
Reuters reported that the SEC is also looking into whether Tesla did not properly notify shareholders and the public of a complaint which focuses on fire risks linked to the company’s solar panel system.
The SEC declined to comment.

In addition, Musk took aim at investing firms that rely on short selling in his email exchange with CNBC.
“Too often, sophisticated hedge funds have used short selling and complex derivatives to take advantage of small investors. They will short a company, conduct a negative publicity campaign to drive the stock price down temporarily and cash out, then do it all over again many times. The term for this, as you may be aware, is ‘short & distort,’ ” Musk said.
After CNBC published Musk’s remarks about short sellers and the SEC on Wednesday, the CEO made additional anti-SEC comments on Twitter. He said he has been “building a case” against the agency, but did not offer specifics.
In 2020, Tesla notoriously skewered short sellers by selling red satin “Short Shorts.”
Musk is known for moving markets himself, often with tweets, prompting investors to call for more regulatory involvement. Critics have called him a market manipulator.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s comments came during the same email exchange during which he also spoke out about his ongoing standoff with President Joe Biden’s administration.

The DOJ probe, according to The Wall Street Journal, is focusing on alleged instances of so called “spoofing” and “scalping.” Spoofing involves illegally using fake orders to pump or crash a stock price while scalping refers to when activist investors close out their positions without disclosing that move.
Muddy Waters Research founder Carson Block, a vocal critic of Musk’s who has shorted Tesla stock, is reportedly among the investors who have been served search warrants by federal investigators in the short-seller probe.
Block said in a statement to the Journal: “I’ve been saying for several years that it is critical for all stakeholders in the ecosystem to develop sophisticated data analysis capabilities to detect problematic trading. It’s dangerous to outsource these analyses to nonpractitioners.”
The New York Times reported last year that Block was moving on from shorting the electric vehicle giant. In a letter the Times obtained, Block explained his decision to allies by saying “the market cap, the luster, the élan of Elon, is still there.”
Andrew Left, another one-time Tesla short, had his computers seized by federal agents, according to Bloomberg. Left said in 2020 that he was shorting the company’s stock.
Musk’s war with short sellers goes beyond advocating for his company. He spoke out against shorts during the GameStop stock frenzy last year, when large groups of retail investors on Reddit helped pump the stock up 1,500% in two weeks.
“u can’t sell houses u don’t own u can’t sell cars u don’t own but u *can* sell stock u don’t own!? this is bs — shorting is a scam legal only for vestigial reasons,” Musk said in a tweet in January 2021.
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this article.

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