New York (CNN Business)It's hard to imagine anyone has had a better year than Elon Musk did in 2020.
His personal net worth soared like one of his SpaceX rockets, increasing by more than $100 billion. And his loudest critics, aka investors who shorted Tesla (TSLA) stock on the assumption the share price would go down, lost a record $40.1 billion betting against him, according to analysis by S3 Partners.
Those critics, with whom Musk has had a very harsh, very public war of words over the years, stood to make a healthy return if Tesla shares dropped in value, but risked big losses if the stock continued to gain.
And, boy, did it gain, rising 743% during the course of the year.
The $40.1 billion in losses by investors shorting Tesla stocks were unlike the losses weathered by any other companies' short investors -- last year or ever -- according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director at S3 and an expert in the subject.
In fact, the losses endured by Tesla shorts were more than the short losses for the next nine companies -- combined. Losses on No. 2 Apple (AAPL) in 2020 came to $6.7 billion, which is only slightly more than Tesla shorts lost in the month of December alone. Amazon (AMZN) cost the shorts $5.8 billion, according to S3.
Tesla has long been a favorite play for short investors, who controlled about 19% of the shares as 2020 began. For all those who believe the company is a paradigm-changing, clean energy leader of unlimited potential, other investors maintain it is an overhyped niche player soon to be overwhelmed by larger, more established automakers.
Many of the shorts were forced to admit defeat last year. About two-thirds of the short positions were unwound during 2020, which in itself was a factor that helped drive Tesla shares higher, as the short investors were forced to buy higher-priced shares to exit their positions.
"It was a gentle tail wind in Tesla's price move all year long," said Dusaniwsky.
But the year ended with short investors still holding roughly 5.5% of Tesla's shares, which equates to a $31 billion bet against the company's future prospects. For comparison, there is $13.3 billion and $10.2 billion currently bet against Apple and Amazon respectively, with shorts controlling less than 1% of each of those companies' stocks.
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