Fisker Short Squeeze?

Posted June 7, 2023

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I vividly remember watching the news coverage of PGA golfer Payne Stewart’s death on October 25, 1999. He was a fun golfer to watch, “old school” in his knee-high knickers, a nod to the bygone era when golf was a “gentleman’s” game, and players wore formal sportswear, complete with jacket and tie.

The knickers and tam Stewart wore were often coordinated in the school colors of a university near the site of whatever tournament he was playing in…

I remember when the F-16s pulled up alongside the LearJet he was in, hours after radio contact had been lost. When the pilots reported that the windows of the jet were iced over, it confirmed the worst. Stewart and the passengers were already gone. All the F-16s could do was escort the winged sarcophagus until it ran out of fuel and crashed in a South Dakota field.

It was an incredibly sad day for golf.

But yesterday, when the PGA announced it was merging with the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour, my own sadness was matched with equal parts of anger.

I’d already written off LIV tour’s founder Greg Norman as a turncoat. Same for golfers like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and the other American golfers who chose to take a payday of Saudi blood money.

The families of the 2,799 people who were killed on 9/11 are rightfully horrified and angry. And I am too.

I understand that there are different factions of the Saudi royal family. Some embrace the stone-age values of Wahhabism and shovel money at terrorists like the ones that flew those planes. Some would rather see Saudi Arabia modernize and join the global business community.

But whether it’s terrorism or golf, the petrodollars are the same, doled out according to one’s proximity to the Saudi throne, where the crown prince who gave the order to dismember a journalist will one day sit.

And the PGA took the money, like nothing ever happened. “It’s just business,” right?

I know I’m riding pretty tall in the saddle of my moral high horse. And I guess I’m just naive to think there’s more than just money and wealth. But I know I won’t be able to shake the sadness and anger at the PGA for legitimizing Saudi money when players tee off at Augusta, or St. Andrew’s…

So I won’t be watching.

*****Back on April 3, I recommended shares of AI-driven drug discovery company Schrodinger (NASDAQ: SDGR) at or below $29. And I gave it a “relatively conservative” price target of $41.

Schrodinger closed at $26.41 that day.

This morning, shares of Schrodinger hit a high of $40.69. Yes, the price pulled back to trade around yesterday’s close at $38. But today is the second time the stock has challenged the $40 level in the last two weeks.

Some traders will tell you that when a stock fails to take out a big round number on the chart, it means the stock is at least fully valued, if not overvalued. I look at it a little differently…

So far, the price probes up to $40 have been met with selling. That establishes $40 as a resistance level. But that $40 level is clearly now in play – traders are watching it. And the more times a stock challenges a support or resistance point, the weaker that price point becomes.

At some point, maybe soon, shares of Schrodinger will break over $40. Traders will be well aware of the breakout, and $40 will become support. Just thought you’d like to know…

*****It might be a good time to buy a few shares of EV maker Fisker (NYSE: FSR).

I know it’s been tough to buy EV stocks the last couple of months, with production and price cuts as EV companies continue to grapple with supply chains and perhaps demand issues. That’s not to mention the difficulties that upstarts face as they try to ramp their own production lines.

But that’s one of the things that attracted me to Fisker in the first place, when I recommended the stock back in March. Fisker opted for a unique business model by outsourcing its production to a Canadian company, Magna International (NYSE: MGA).

While Fisker has delayed delivery of its Ocean line of SUVs, it was because of permitting and regulatory approval, not production issues. Deliveries have already started in Europe and will commence in the U.S. on June 19.

Short sellers have been all over Fisker. The stock has been as low as $4.50 since it took a shine to it. It’s currently trading around $6. But as of May 15, 35% of the stock had been sold short – 67 million shares.

Now, the shorts have done a good job of weighing on the price so they can cover. Pretty much every rally attempt over the last few weeks has been squashed, including today. Fisker hit an intra-day high at $6.66 before reversing.

But call option volume for contracts that expire this week are very high…