In general, the higher the variance in outcomes, the higher the expected payout of an investment.
Also, if you have more money you can decrease the variance in your payout by making multiple uncorrelated (1) investments.
That can make investments that are insane for the average citizen look as huge opportunities for the very rich.
For example, consider a game using a fair coin “put in $100k, heads you lose everything, tails we pay out $201k”.
If you have 100k in savings for retirement, you probably wouldn’t want to play that game. People who have $100M, on the other hand, might line up to play it a thousand times, as that game, on average, pays out 0.5% per game played.
I would hope manny of those shorting Tesla must have thought this “game” is similar: high risk, but an expected payout that is better than that of less risky investments.
(1) there’s a risk there, as totally uncorrelated investments do not exist anymore in a global economy.
I’m sure my risk/reward bias would be skewed if the downside was “less commission income” rather than “well there goes my retirement”