Andrew Left read what Bullock said on CNBC in his office at Manhattan.
The office space of Citron Capital is completely different from that of Muddy Waters.
On Muddy Waters's bookshelf is a hardcover collection of Short Selling's reports over the years. Each copy is stamped with gold letters and arranged neatly like a trophy;
There is only a huge screen hanging in Citron's Meeting Room, scrolling the real-time quotes of the world's major markets.
There are several Bloomberg Terminal units piled in the corner, and several research drafts that have not yet been filed are scattered on the table.
This place is not like a research institution, but more like a Trading Room--
This fits right in with Left's style:
Quick, accurate, ruthless, and disdainful of putting an academic cloak on the report.
Left is sitting in front of the screen, holding an uncapped Fountain Pen in his hand, tapping the pen body with his knuckles.
He watched the entire live interview of Bullock--
When I heard Bullock say "We underestimated Era Vanguard's financial transparency",
He snorted, put the pen on the table, turned his chair half a circle, and turned his head to look at the Manhattan skyline outside the window.
He is not angry, he is calculating. Calculating the market's reaction after Bullock's "correction",
Calculate how many time windows there are left for Citron on Tesla and Short Position to leave safely, and calculate your next step.
He is different from Bullock.
Bullock is the origin of the report Short Selling, and every report must withstand being checked out and reconciled paragraph by paragraph afterwards;
He is a trader, and his core ability has never been to write impeccable reports, but to judge the direction one step ahead of the market.
In May, he unceremoniously publicly questioned Era Vanguard's financial compliance on CNBC,
Those words were heavier than Bullock,
It directly uses terms that are on the fringes of the law, such as "bypassing the requirements for transparency in traditional banking supervision" and "suspected of false declarations".
Now he must swallow all the side effects of those words - but he has no intention of admitting it publicly like Bullock.
His creed has never been "Admit your mistakes and you will win", but "Run first to be respectful".
He did not accept any media interview requests.
Reporters from CNBC, Bloomberg, and Reuters called the same office phone number repeatedly within five days.
Every call was blocked by his aides, with responses politely but firmly worded - "Andrew has no plans to comment publicly at this time."
Someone on Twitter directly tweeted him and asked him if he still insisted on the accusation against Era Vanguard in May, but he did not reply.
The tweet posted in late May -- "Era Vanguard is suspected of making a false declaration" --
It's still on his timeline, not deleted, and not Supplementary Explanation.
The comment area has gone viral. Someone posted a link to the SEC's closing letter.
Someone copied what Bullock said on CNBC verbatim in their reply, and someone else asked directly--
"Are you going to take it back, or are you going to pretend you never said it?"
Left did not delete that tweet.
It's not that he forgot, it's that he never deletes posts.
Every Bulls and Bears opinion he posted and every prediction that was later proven wrong remained in place.
This is not magnanimity, but a more secretive kind of protection--
If he starts deleting posts, the market will immediately amplify hostility to his latest comments.
Let the old post be laughed at for a few weeks. Once the novelty wears off, no one will read it again.
But at the transaction level, he didn't hesitate at all.
The same week that the SEC closing letter was delivered,
Transaction data show that an institutional seat previously marked as "High Frequency Short Selling" began to continue to cover Tesla stocks with small and medium-sized orders--
The transaction characteristics of this seat are highly consistent with the Citron associated account.
Small and medium-sized orders are intensively traded, prefer the late trading period, and rarely place orders in the Call Auction stage.
Matching features also appear on Options Chain:
The heavy positions previously accumulated on the deep virtual value Put Option began to be reduced day by day.
The pace of closing positions is neither fast nor slow, and a portion is digested every day, just within the critical range that does not trigger an obvious chasing order.
Citron is not the only one who is also quietly closing its positions.
The transaction details of NASDAQ show that starting from the week when the SEC closure letter was released,
Several institutional seats that had previously held the heaviest positions on Tesla on Short Sellers began to continue net covering.
The distribution of buying sessions is deliberately spread out during non-active trading hours.
The Short Sellers camp is disintegrating in silence.
Bloomberg's report is very subtle,
It only objectively describes the new long position of Tesla that is clearly appearing in the market, and does not name the specific party to close the position;
But Wall Street News's translation sharply points out that "the most famous Tesla Short Sellers" seem to be retreating collectively.
CNBC's midday show has once again brought this topic back into the spotlight.
Host Morgan Brennan opened with these words -
"Ladies and gentlemen, this past week we witnessed a rare phenomenon:
The two major Short Selling institutions - Muddy Waters and Citron - fell silent at the same time.
Muddy Waters at least came out and admitted that he underestimated Era Vanguard, and Citron told the truth with actions."
The screen behind her switches to K-line Chart of Tesla,
The chart marks the range of intensive position building in May Short Sellers, the starting point of the stock price rebound in early June, and the intensive net buying signals that appeared in recent trading days.
Market analysts added that the net replenishment of Tesla and Short Sellers in the past two weeks has been very significant.
It's just that the specific positions to be closed are distributed across multiple seats, making it difficult to lock in at a glance.
Another commentator then took over and quoted the widely circulated comment on Twitter--
"Citron's Short Selling report is still online, but their Short Position is no longer there."
This sentence was later quoted repeatedly by Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC and many other media, becoming a footnote to this Short Selling debacle--
Some institutions chose to apologize publicly, while others chose to use stop-loss orders and net liquidation actions to confess their true judgments to the market.
In the follow-up tweet to the Bloomberg news, Andrew Left's undeleted tweet was mentioned again.
Someone said in the comments that his silence was not an avoidance of Era Vanguard,
It's a momentary judgment as a trader that immediately switches to exit mode after admitting a mistake--
Don't waste your time talking nonsense, because the window to close your position is fleeting.
Others pointed out that this may be one of the few times when even Left himself is unwilling to show off his strength on Twitter.
Zhao Chen looked at the analysis in the CNBC afternoon program replay in front of his Bloomberg Terminal,
And a summary of the transaction details of Left marked as the net liquidation subject of Short Sellers.
Chen Xi sent him a message, only one line--
"Citron has a high probability of starting to close the position."
He replied one word to Chen Xi, then put down his cell phone and leaned on the back of the sofa. Hudson River outside the window was rippling quietly in the evening sunlight.
There was no pride in his heart - it was not that he was disapproving of the closing of Citron, but that he had been waiting for the other boot to fall.
Muddy Waters has been hit back by supervision and facts. Citron chose to use stop loss orders and silence.
But the subtext of Carson Bullock's words in the CNBC interview, "He's got backing up where we least expect," is still hanging in the air.
Zhao Chen tapped his fingers on the armrest of the sofa, and continued to push his thoughts in the direction of Nvidia and Tesla's delivery of data at the end of the year.
Regardless of whether Citron admits his mistake or not, the alliance itself has lost an irreparable piece of the puzzle.