LONDON (Reuters) – Investors are estimated to have won billions of dollars from their soaring bets on Tesla and large technology stocks in the recent buyback caused by an increase in US Treasury yields, data from financial analysis firm Ortex said on Tuesday.
Tesla was the biggest gain for short sellers, giving them an estimated $ 4.2 billion in profits by 2021, followed by earnings of more than $ 1 billion on Zoom Video and Apple, according to Ortex.
However, they were burned by betting against game maker Gamestop. The company, which was at the heart of the so-called “stonks” retail craze, has grown another 400 percent in the past two weeks as amateur investors have jumped back.
GameStop’s strategic e-commerce plans have been seen leading to this week’s renewed gains in January’s “meme” shares, along with speculation that small investors will use their future incentive checks to trade.
In other major bets, investors won about $ 1 billion from the QQQ short circuit, an ETF that tracks the performance of the Nasdaq 100. The technology benchmark hit correction territory on Monday, dropping more than 10 percent of record highs.
Reporting by Thyagaraju Adinarayan; edited by Sujata Rao