I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what short sellers do (which is where most of the "fraud" accusation comes from). Some short sellers DO claim fraudulent behavior, e.g. Enron was famously predicted to be fraudulent by Jim Chanos.
However short selling at its core just involves the belief that a company is overvalued. In the case of extreme fraud, the "correct value" is $0. In most cases, the short seller just believes it's some amount less than the current share price (but above $0).
Tesla falls into the latter category. I'm sure some do claim fraudulent behavior, but Tesla is an interesting case because Tesla's PE is ~200 IIRC, compared to the 20 average for the automotive industry. For comparison, Amazon's PE is 120.
So if you think Tesla is ultimately a car company, or even just a "regular" tech company, it's not insane to think that it's incredibly overvalued. That doesn't mean you think it's a fraud, of course, but the subtlety obviously gets lost by many (and short sellers often make grandiose edicts that don't help their case).
Plenty of companies have justified negative P/E, which is worse than 896, and still worse than even 10,000. In fact, their share price kept going up all the way until their P/E was strongly positive.
Musk has said he thinks that Tesla's stock is overvalued, and the company has sold stock to raise funds.
Musk may hate them, but there's is little-to-no daylight between him and the short sellers at this point; both think Tesla's stock is currently overvalues and are selling it to cash in on the current high valuations. :)
However short selling at its core just involves the belief that a company is overvalued. In the case of extreme fraud, the "correct value" is $0. In most cases, the short seller just believes it's some amount less than the current share price (but above $0).
Tesla falls into the latter category. I'm sure some do claim fraudulent behavior, but Tesla is an interesting case because Tesla's PE is ~200 IIRC, compared to the 20 average for the automotive industry. For comparison, Amazon's PE is 120.
So if you think Tesla is ultimately a car company, or even just a "regular" tech company, it's not insane to think that it's incredibly overvalued. That doesn't mean you think it's a fraud, of course, but the subtlety obviously gets lost by many (and short sellers often make grandiose edicts that don't help their case).