Investors betting on a Tesla Inc. slide faced a paper loss of more than $1 billion Tuesday after the stock rallied on Chief Executive Elon Musk’s going-private tweets and email to company employees. Tesla TSLA, +10.99% short sellers “have taken another body blow to the ribs” and could see their positions “go up in smoke,” said S3 Partners LLC, which tracks real-time short interest data, in a note late Tuesday. Short sellers were down $1.5 billion in mark-to-market losses Tuesday, bringing August losses to $3 billion, year-to-date losses to $3.2 billion, and losses since 2016 to $6.6 billion, according to the financial technology and analytics firm. Shorts also lost more than $1 billion in mark-to-market losses in a single session last week after Tesla’s earnings report. Tesla has about $12.8 billion in short-seller interest, behind only Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA, +0.73% world-wide, S3 Partners said.via